The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton

This summer, my son and I found some vintage books at a garage sale. One of them was The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton from 1942, which won the Caldecott Medal that year. I love how old children's books have pages made from really thick paper and the way the illustrations seem so much richer. My two-year-old really enjoys the story of the little pink house, which starts out in an idyllic country setting, then suffers as the years go by and urban sprawl consumes "the field of daisies and the apple trees dancing in the moonlight". Burton's depiction of the city is dirty and dreary, and while that's not my memory of living in the city - a part of my life I loved - it's a sweet reminder of the beauty of a rural setting: watching the light change as the sun makes its daily progression across the sky, the leaves turning brilliant hues in autumn, being able to see so many stars at night, and yes, our apple trees swaying in the wind.

A Day At the Farm

My son and I spent the afternoon at a farm. It's the childhood home of my best friend from elementary school; she and I fell in love over My Little Ponies in third grade at Catholic School. In the barn, there is the sweetest little black calf named Henry, who was abandoned by his mother and is being fed by bottle. We were able to give him his 1:00 feeding, and my son was thrilled! Hands-down the cutest thing I've seen in a long time - my happy little boy feeding a fuzzy baby cow a bottle of milk.

In the pasture, there's a pond where we used to swim with the horses on hot days when we were young. The kids splashed and caught tadpoles and filled their boots with water, while the dogs dove after a rubber ball. There is also a box full of kittens tucked into the hay in the barn and a foal that we watched nurse from his mother. Later, while I watched him climb on a tractor, play in the sandbox, and savor a grape popsicle, I knew I would be dragging a reluctant toddler to the car when it was time to leave. Just a very simple, storybook kind of day. :)