The first installment of Austen & Bronte came with the Pride & Prejudice and Jane Eyre counting primers from Baby Lit. And you jumped over to Amazon and bought them as gifts for all those lovely kiddos in your life (or maybe even yourself). Well, the next installment brings the other Bronte sister and our lovely Jane:

Sense and Sensibility is a board book to teach all about the opposites and Wuthering Heights is a weather primer for the young ones… a pun I’m sure Miss Emily would approve of!

And finally, for all of those budding oceanographers and marine biologists (or just fish lovers)…an ocean primer by Moby Dick!

All of these BabyLit books come out on March 1st, 2013 but are available for pre-order from Amazon right now!

I had the pleasure of being introduced a wonderful online shopping site for awesome kids gifts… Hullabalu.

The concept is pretty simple. Share great character plushies from the world of Hullabalu in an easy to access shopping portal. No need to dig through page after page after category after page in search of a good gift.

Here’s one of their first characters… Pan! (a purple Panda no less!)

Here’s her backstory: Pandora Beribolt aka “Pan” is a panda of the nomadic cloud tribe; living in the sky going where the winds take them. Pan’s parents left her in the care of the tribe when she was very young as they went to investigate a change in the winds. She grew up as an independent, tough kid with a mischievous streak.

And here’s the plushie cuteness of Pan in real life!

Here in the M household, we’re pretty big advocates of having 100x as many stuffed animals as arms to told them… so it’s no surprise that I instantly loved the concept and the execution of this wonderfully imaginative new world. And while the site is still in beta, you can sign up now and get an invite when then doors open in the near future!

Before they had introduced their new characters and redesigned the shop, they carried a selection of some of the best plushies around and I was lucky enough to have them send Miss L her very own Gruffalo…

What’s a gruffalo?          A gruffalo?? Why… did you know???

If you haven’t heard of “The Gruffalo” and you’re a parent, I suggest adding it to your Amazon.com queue and never looking back. It’s one of Miss L’s favorite bedtime stories, and she loves reading it to us now! But let’s just say he’s a hideously wonderful imaginary character that comes to life to the astonishment of all… oh, and he has purple prickles all over his back…

So this past weekend, when the big blue box from Hullabalu arrived on our doorstep, I quickly snuck the box inside and set her up to surprise her.

We got to the part where the Gruffalo shows up in the book…

and then magically the Gruffalo appeared in her lap as well!

There’s something simply magical about having a world full of plush friends as a kid… says the former little girl with hundreds of her own friends. And I can’t wait to see what wonderful characters the world of Hullabalu holds in store for us in the future…

When your start amassing your child’s literature collection, you begin with the books you loved as a child. And then you stare at the books on your bookshelves and get excited at the thought of when those books will be read and loved… and sadly that’s many years away.

So excuse my squeals of excitement and glee (Mr. M had to endure my, “OMG… the cuteness! LOOK AT THE CUTENESS!”) when I happened upon these insanely adorable board books from Gibbs Smith.

Pride & Prejudice: A BabyLit Board Book

[also available for the iPad]

Romeo & Juliet: A BabyLit Board Book

[also available for the iPad]

And two more books are coming out in March:

Jane Eyre: A Counting Primer  and Alice in Wonderland: A Colors Primer

While she’s only turning 20 months this week, I’m suddenly realizing that she’s becoming older much faster than I ever expected in my mind. It’s happening at such a rapid pace, that I can barely stop to write down what’s going on. In short, my mind is literally blown over the recent developmental breakthroughs, and I’m realizing that I have a full on PERSON in front of me…. not a baby or a toddler or whatever random age assignment you want to put on it… she is a PERSON in a little body.

Sure, her id might be might have been running the show full-time, but the ego is coming into picture now and you can actually see her thought process happen in front of you. No really… she fully says, “Ummm…..” and looks up sideways into her brain for the answer and then gives it to you 3 seconds later. It’s astonishing when you think about it, and in the moment it’s downright adorable.

She reads along with her books like they’re old stories from years past. If I didn’t know better, I’d actually think she could read the words on the page.

She climbs into her own highchair, and then declares herself, “Stuck.”

She counts from 1-10 as we descend or ascend the stairway in the house… conveniently skipping 5 and 7 for reasons we’ve yet to discover. And she sings the alphabet some like she knows that they’re actual letters, not just sounds from a song.

She pouts with sincerity when she doesn’t get what she wants… and she knows how to break into a fake cry when she’s willing to put on a show for that want.

She makes decisions, and even when posed with multiple options, she sticks to her guns and asks what she really really wants.

She makes connections between things in the present and the past. On Sunday, I asked if she wanted to go and watch football upstairs. She headed to the stairs, then turned around and said, “Chip?” and walked towards the kitchen. When we had the chips she said, “Dip?” and suddenly I realized that last Monday night’s tortilla chip and guac fest while watching MNF was still fresh in her mind.

She asks to, “try try” all of our food.

She asks to wear certain colors each day. Today it was yellow socks and pink shoes. And when she got to school, the first thing she told her teacher was, “pink shoes! yellow sock.”

She follows multiple directions in one fell swoop even when you don’t expect her to understand half of what you’re saying. “Go in the other room, pick up your blocks and you can have a popsicle,” turns into her doing exactly that and returning to ask for a “cokcle.”

She asks for the the “big box” of Playmobil zoo parts and asks, “Dadda… sit. Sit Dadda” so that Daddy can play along with her.

And this morning, she called out, “Memphis!!” instead of “Mem Mem” … and I think I shed a few tears.

She’s a real person alright… despite any toddling she still might do… a real little person.

Oh what a happy 20 months it has been… with so many more to come!

If you have a little girl, you may have noticed a disturbing trend in the sock department. Instead of selling pairs of socks… some stores now sell them in sets of 3.

And none of them are the same sock.

I don’t quite know how one is supposed to manage the purchase of said socks. My natural instinct is to buy two sets of the same mismatched socks, but that results in perfect pairs, and obviously misses the entire point of the mismatching to begin with…

I mismatched Miss L’s socks this morning, but it was out of necessity because I forgot to sort her sock laundry and not because I’m a super-awesome and hip mom.

But seriously… what is one supposed to do here? Just buy three socks and let it be… and always have one sock hanging out in the drawer waiting for the next wear?