Seven Months

Some of Hannah's favorite things include:

Saying Da Da Da
Clapping her hands
Pulling herself onto everything
Crawling like crazy
Finding small spots to climb through
Saying Ya Ya and Ba Ba Ba
Waving
Watching Your Baby can Read (she loves watching baby MaKayla
Eating ANY kind of baby food (she isn't picky)
Mirrors
A fake laugh when other people laugh
Playing with Daddy
Snuggles with Mommy
Walks in the Morning
Library on Tuesdays
and 4:30 in the morning

The path of most resistance.

Hannah decided to make her way over to our kitchen table chairs...through her high chair.

Forget the path of least resistance with this one...she is a baby on a mission.

You did it Hannah! Good job!

Ok Baby, just look over here, slide out the front.

Oh no...

Ok here you go.

You are free Hannah

Yep. You found it. Your favorite naughty spot.

Movie Review: The Kite Runner

I had mentioned a desire to read this book about a month ago to Adam. Being the wonderful husband that he is, he decided to netflix the movie so I could save myself a book (roll eyes).

This movie was one of the most beautiful I've seen in a long time. It was a very similar feeling to Life is Beautiful. Very heavy, very lovely.

It is a story of Amir who is living in Kabul. His best friend is Hassan, the son of his father's servant. Hassan is basically the worlds greatest friend and will do anything, sacrifice anything for Amir. He takes beatings for him, defends him, loves him. One day when Hassan needs him the most, Amir betrays his friend and is left feeling depressed and guilty.

To force Hassan to leave, Amir frames him by planting a watch and some money under Hassan's mattress; Hassan falsely confesses. Amirs father forgives him, despite the fact that, as he explained earlier, he believes that "there is no act more wretched than stealing." Hassan and his father Ali, to Amir's father's extreme sorrow, leave anyway. Hassan's departure frees Amir of the daily reminder of his cowardice and betrayal, but he still lives in their shadow and his guilt.

Before making it up to him, the Soviets force Amir and his father to leave Afghanistan and they flee to America. In Afghanistan they were living a life of luxury and wealth, in America his father runs a gas station and Amir is now graduating from the local community college and working on becoming a writer.

Flash forward to 2000, Amir has now published his first book and gets a call from a friend of his father telling him he needs to return to Afghanistan.

From there Amir goes on a harrowing journey of redemption. I won't spoil anything but I will say that if you liked Life is Beautiful you will like The Kite Runner.

Oh on a side note, the title comes from a game the children play in Afghanistan where they fly kites and attempt to cut the other kites down. There are a few beautiful scenes with kite flying.

This movie made me bawl uncontrollably. You have been warned.

Book Review: The Lovely Bones

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.”

The Lovely Bones isn't a book I would normally read, so when I came upon it I was eager to try something new.

I have to say that I loved the first two thirds of the book. In fact I know that Alice Siebol could have found a way to end the book two thirds of the way through and I would have nothing but rave reviews, however...the last third turned into a completely different book that I stopped enjoying :(

The book starts out with the murder of 14 year old Suzie Salmon by her neighbor George Harvey. It goes into some pretty grizzly details and it is hard to fathom. It goes through the subsequent days, weeks, months after she goes missing, all that is found is an elbow.

The book is narrated by Suzie as she observes the world through her heaven. She watches her father and mother fall apart and away from each other, her sister and brother try to cope with her death, her friend Ruth and her boyfriend, her murderer George Harvey.

It is a book about letting go and moving on, not only for the people left behind but for the dead as well. She cheers her family on as they find the missing pieces and have happy moments and she holds on to George Harvey, even reuniting in heaven with girls that he murdered before and after Suzie.

Like I said, for the most part I enjoyed the book, the story, I didn't enjoy the time line and felt that I was left without closure. I wouldn't recommend this book for anyone who reads this blog but may find some people who would enjoy it among my circle of friends.