Made for kids, Loved by adults!

I'm a Gryffindor, married to a Ravenclaw. I'm pretty sure we spawned a Hufflepuff, judging from her little sounds of distress when her binky falls out.

Are you with me? I'm an adult fan of the Harry Potter series...I have read all the books at least once, have cried and cried when certain of my favorite wizards have been killed off in the interest of making for very dramatic and life like situations...okay, well, not life like in the sense that wizards kill one another with nothing more than their wand and a forbidden curse, but in the sense that even our favorite people have to go sometimes. I've seen all the movies, and am so happy to look forward to the Half Blood Prince as well as the final book the Deathly Hallows being made into a movie. That's right...I'm a bigtime fan.

I love the Weasleys. I despise the Slytherins in a strange love/hate way...they make for a great conflict with my beloved characters! I love Hogwarts, and Dumbledore and McGonagall. I love Lupin and Tonks, I love Mad-Eye and Sirius Black. I hate the Malfoys, Snape, and most pattionately Delores Umbridge (whos carte blanche ban on the teaching of things she deems unuseful remind me of a certain book-banning VP candidate, but we're not talking about that right now...I digress). I could go on for days about my love of this series...

But that's not what I'm writing about either. Today I'd like to write about my latest addiction, the Twilight series. That's right, the latest made-for-teens-but consumed-by-adults series of novels sweeping 30 and 40-somethings across the nation. Since Ajay and I traveled a lot in our earlier, pre-baby, pre-infertiilty, pre-pregnancy stage of our relationship, we spent a considerable amount of time observing slices of life in international airports...and I would always marvel at how many adults were carrying with them or deeply engrossed in the Harry Potter series. Now it seems that the Twilight series hopes to follow in those footsteps...at least among women readers.

I recently heard from a high school friend on Facebook that she too is addicted to the series, and was feeling a little bit apprehensive about being so far out of the target audience. Well, I'm here to tell you all that it doesn't matter! Does true love have age limitations? No. So read on, all you 30 somethings and 40 somethings out there. 

A light at the end of the sleepy tunnel?

Today I woke up feeling pretty good. Yesterday's increase in nap time actually did prove to make for a better night...forget what everybody says and what logic and your own intuition says...fewer naps and less sleep during the day does not mean longer sleep at night...in fact, not enough sleep during the day is pretty much a guarantee that babies have extended bouts of crying in the late afternoon, become overstimulated, frantic, and find drifting off to sleep nearly impossible.

No, I'm not the authority...at all. In fact, Alia has still only slept more than 5 hours at a stretch one time. But we're making progress...last night rather than waking up every 2.5 to 3 hours, she slept in 4 hour stretches, and had no, that's right, NO afternoon meltdown! This after allowing her to sleep almost 3 hours in the late afternoon...which I was very nervous about, but decided to just follow what the Babywise book said and see what happened...after all, it couldn't get much worse, right? The book said basically what my first paragraph details about the need for enough sleep throughout the day. And to my surprise, Alia went off to sleep with minimal reassuring...in her crib/expensive toy box...and remained there all night, except for getting up for her late night feedings. Which, by the way, the author of Babywise says should not be necessary anymore...sure, try telling Alia that!