Welcome to Round 42 of this little series I started of all the things in life I’m loving and learning lately! Here you’ll find everything from the books I’m currently reading to the products I’m loving to the shows I’m watching (which, spoiler alert–won’t be very many or very exciting, since I’m not a huge t.v. or movie watcher). If you want to check out past editions of the series, click here.
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Loving Lately
- We bought these kids’ plates a couple years ago, and they seriously look basically brand new, even after some pretty rough wear and tear. Every time I go to wash some terribly hardened food off of these, I marvel at how truly nonstick they are, and how easily they come clean again. I also love that they’re made of recycled milk jugs, which is just cool. We already own six, but I’m seriously considering buying another pack, just so we can be guaranteed to have enough for each child to have one for every meal. (Oh, and I also love that they are the perfect size to fit on a high chair tray.)
- We’re always behind the times on the latest movies and shows, but we finally got around to watching Encanto the other week and totally loved it! Both my husband and I are constantly singing “Surface Pressure” to each other, just because it’s both ridiculously catchy and it’s basically the theme song of every parent or adult everywhere. We’ve even started listening to it while we do our strength training workouts together, ha ha. Oh, and I also love the song because I have a super low voice, and it’s about time there was a song written totally for my vocal range 🙂
Learning Lately
Recent and Current Reads
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
This was my book club’s pick for February, and I ended up really enjoying it. It might have been a case of “right book, right time,” but I gave this 4.5 stars (a high rating indeed from me!). So much of contemporary fiction tends to be so terribly depressing, but I found this book to be uplifting and life-affirming, and I loved that it played on an idea that I’m sure most people have toyed with in idle moments — “How would my life have been different if I’d made one different choice?” While Haig’s writing is nothing special, the plotline of this is fairly quick-paced and fresh, and it was a fun ride to glimpse into all the different lives that one person could potentially lead. With a caution that there is quite a bit of profanity throughout, this is a general recommend.
Peppermints in the Parlor by Barbara Brooks Wallace
This was one of my absolute favorite books as a kid, and I couldn’t wait until my own kids were old enough to appreciate this slightly gothic children’s story of a recently orphaned girl who goes to live with her aunt at Sugar Hill Hall, only to discover that nothing in the mansion is as she remembers it and that her aunt is hiding a terrible secret. My family absolutely ate this up (including my husband), and it was such a fun read-aloud to do together. High recommend.
Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Doucleff
I’m pretty picky about the parenting books I choose to pick up (as I detailed in this round-up of favorite parenting books I did), but when multiple blog readers raved about this title and listed it among their top reads from 2021, I decided I’d better give it a shot. AND I’M SO GLAD I DID!!! I love that Doucleff approaches parenting from a totally unique angle (in the Western parenting book sphere, anyway), in that she bases her research largely on several indigenous cultures that have largely been parenting the same way for thousands of years. I had about a million “ah ha!” moments while reading this, and it also made me realize why some of our current parenting strategies WERE working, and why others weren’t. It also made me think back to why so many of the children I encountered while serving an 18-month mission in El Salvador were so well-behaved and helpful, which is something I’d always wondered about. Seriously, this easily makes the top 3 parenting books of all time that I’ve read. Phenomenal.
What books have given you an ‘ah-ha!’ moment lately? Or any other movies or shows that I definitely need to see? Drop a comment below and share!
