Blogging Reading Thoughts

Hiring my mother's helpers has gone a long way toward keeping my sanity this summer.  They have the boys at the playground and C is napping, so I thought I'd drop in and say hi.  It reminds me of the days when I started blogging - just about 3 years ago, when the boys were 4 months old and falling into a napping routine, leaving me with large(ish) chunks of time to write and ponder new motherhood. (Because my house was so much smaller then I didn't have nearly the housework, either!)  That sure doesn't happen nowadays!  My blogging is not at all up to the standard of writing I would love to do and CAN do, but I won't quit for a few reasons:

• my memory is poor - pretty sure it's that my brain cells are getting sucked right out of me, literally! - and I want to note down the milestones and cute day to day things that happen for the future.  Hopefully I can get the blog printed into book form one day but from the bit of research I've done, it's going to be expensive.  And you know me, I don't like expensive.
• I do love to write.  It's cathartic. Like I said, I'm not writing the thoughtful and funny things I would like to every day, but just having a blog to jot things down in, like this week's funny incident where M threw the rock up into the air, after I'd told him a dozen times that day not to do so, and it hit him in the nose!  It was a landscaping rock, so don't worry, he wasn't hurt.  That smiley mowing pic was taken just about 2 minutes after it happened.  It's stuff like that I won't even remember next week.
• The out of state families like to see pics of the boys and read their funny stories and even keep up with their health issues via the blog.  Sometimes it's hard to keep everyone updated via phone just because we are all so busy.  And Hubs says he likes to read it when he's traveling because every now and then I'll write something that surprises him.  And wasn't Tuesday's blog a sweet surprise from him?  That's the kind of guy I married.  
• My bloggy friends.  They are few, but a regular source of encouragement because they are in their own trenches of toddler-hood craziness and understand what it's like to have poop-splosions on a daily basis.  Because it happened to them yesterday, not years ago.  
• I need to keep my mind engaged.  I know it's not much, blogging, but simply reading and writing and connecting with others, however small an effort, is good for the brain that loves to learn and teach but is not able to do so in a professional manner right now.  It's also why I crochet (I'm already making Christmas gifts) and read - keeping the brain going.  

Speaking of reading - I'm going off on a tanget now - I read two memoirs this summer on Hub's ipad.

• One was downloaded from the local library so it only stayed on the ipad for 3 weeks (how does it know to disappear?!) but it was good.  It gave me insight into what it's like to lose your mom to cancer and therefore much more compassion and empathy toward my friends who have. It's What We Have by Amy Boesky.
• Passport Through Darkness by Kimberly Smith.  This was a free download, the story of a woman who works as a missionary in Darfur, fighting to save children from the sex slave industry, then building an orphanage for them and other children, how she did it and how she and her marriage almost didn't survive it.

• Now I'm reading We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee.  I picked it up at the library yesterday while the boys were playing with the wooden trains.  I know it's a movie now, and it's a movie I've wanted to see since I first saw the ads for it.  (It would seem that I could watch movies at home but that just doesn't happen, what with only getting one quiet hour per evening on average, from 9-10 when I'm just beat.) I stayed up WAY WAY too late reading this last night.  

I love reading memoirs because truth is stranger than fiction (unless you're into sci-fi like my MIL).  And because everyone else's life is so much more INTERESTING than mine! (So it baffles me why you keep reading!) What memoirs do you recommend?

I hear the munchkins so I'd better go.  I'm sure they've woken up C and he'll be hungry...it's been almost 4 hours.