Mister Man, Boy Detective

This hasn't quite been the spring break we planned this year. While I knew my husband would be at the high school with the baseball team three of our days off, I was still planning to do some fun things with the wee ones.

You know -- head up to a waterpark for a night or two with some friends, maybe teach Mister Man to ride his bike without the training wheels, lots of time outside making chalk drawings, definitely hanging out at the club playing in the pool, and maybe some time to get some good playdates in.

Yeah.

We've done none of those things. Between Mister Man breaking his arm the week before spring break and Little Miss being pretty sick since the first day of spring break, we haven't done one of those things.

Instead, we've spent a lot of time at home, nursing Little Miss and doing some quiet playing. That's right. We haven't even done the chalk drawing outside, which you would think would be easy.

Did I forget to mention the flooding rains and cold weather? Oh. Shame on me. We have snow in the forecast tomorrow, too.

This did afford me to do one special thing with Mister Man though. We went to the library, and he decided he wanted his very own library card. Who am I to stop him? So he now is the proud owner of a library card. That I keep in my wallet.



(And yes, that's a raincoat. Because of the massive rainstorms.) With his very first libary card, he couldn't decide what to check out. Partly, this was because he decided he wanted a libary card after we'd already checked out our books and were on the way to the car. He'd gotten two Thomas books for the sick Little Miss and chosen two for himself - the next Magic Treehouse book and another Roscoe Riley Rules book. (And he was very disappointed that Bad Kitty Gets a Bath was the first and so far only book in that series.)

That means I got to choose the book for him. I thought back to what it was like when I was young, the books I enjoyed. He's definitely reading more advanced books than I was at his age, but I finally decided on a series that I enjoyed as a child that I thought wouldn't be too old for him.



Yep, that would be Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective. Ten mysteries from the boy genius that make you think, too. And of course it has the requisite villain -- frequently Bugs Meaney.

When we got home, he sat down and read the first four stories without delay. I think we have a winner.

And another milestone is passed. My little baby is turning into quite the big boy here. And I'm so proud of him!