Day #15: Cate and the Goblet of Fire

Perhaps some of you have been following our Harry Potter adventures this summer.  Cate, who declared at the beginning of the summer that she was done with the children's section of the library and ready for young adult books, started reading the Harry Potter series.  The books are much beloved at our house. Brian and I read the first three aloud when were were pregnant with Frances. I stood in line for Goblet of Fire, willing Frances not to be born before I got my copy. I was reading Goblet of Fire when I went into labor.  I eventually read them all aloud to her and we celebrated her 11th birthday by going to see the midnight showing of the last film (her reward for finishing all the books her own--you have to read the book before you see the movie at our house).  We love these books and are happy to welcome Cate into the club.

Cate loves these books. She's reading them obsessively. I'll read a chapter to her and then she'll stay awake FOR HOURS and read 8 or 10 or 12 chapters to herself. Which brings us to last night when I found her curled up beneath her covers at 12:30am near the end of Goblet of Fire. "Cate, what are you doing?" I asked. She turned slowly to me, with the most wide-eyed expression, and said, "It's too much. It's just too much, Mommy." Cedric had been killed; Voldermort had returned; and Cate was overwhelmed.

We went to the kitchen for warm milk, she asked if anything important happened in the last chapters, I told her she didn't have to finish it if she didn't want to, and then I put her back to bed. When I went to wake her up this morning, she was curled around the book. She woke up long enough to tell me she finished it and that she was exhausted.

She may not survive Order of the Phoenix. I'm torn about whether or not I should let her read it.

Day #12: Cate and Harry Potter

About a month ago, Cate announced that she was ready to move from the children's section of the library up to the young adult section, where Frances gets all her books. This presents some difficulty for us because, while she is fully capable of reading everything in the young adult section, there's a lot of it she's not allowed to read.  Luckily, she's decided to start this new stage of reading with the Harry Potter books.

She read 3/4 of the first book before it got too scary and she stopped (which means she totally missed Dumbledore awarding 5 points to Griffyndor because Neville stood up to his friends [which is much harder than standing up to your enemies, but I digress]). She just finished the second book, which she loved. She's developed the most adorable squeak in response to each appearance of Lucius Malfoy.

She got the third book down from the shelf and started to read it. I told her she needs to go to sleep and can finish reading tomorrow. And then we had this conversation:

Cate: This book is so tempting. It's so good, Mommy.

Me: What's good about it?

Cate: Everything! The words, the language. It's so juicy!

Me: I'm so glad you like it, honey, but you still need to go to sleep.

10 minutes later I go to check on her and find this. She's totally pretending to be asleep here. As I type this I can hear her giggling at the book.

Saturday Night Random-ness

Random #1
The new television ads for Slumdog Millionaire are touting it as the most moving love story of the season. There a great shots of kisses and long, soulful looks against a soundtrack of almost riotous Bollywood music. Now, I have no problem with the characterization of this movie as a love story because it certainly is that. But it's also, in many ways, for large stretches of the movie, a deeply disturbing movie. It's about a guy's love for a girl and about his run on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire; but it is also about orphan brothers from the slums of Mumbai and the things they need to do and are forced to do to survive. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy the movie (I actually loved it). I'm just saying these new commercials are a bit dishonest.

Random #2
What kind sick, twisted universe do we live in that gives your child a 102 degree fever at 3am that then drops to 100 by 7am and 98 by the time you get to the pediatrician's drop-in hours at 8am? What the hell is that?

Speaking of hell--is there any more hellish place that drop-in hours on a Friday morning? Exhausted parents (because we've been up all night) with grumpy, germy kids all trying to get seen by the doctor before the weekend. We love our pediatrician and have no complaints at all about the care we get. But the 90 minutes we sat before we got to see the doctor (all to find out Frances *doesn't* have strep throat, just some random virus) even had me a little testy.

Random #3
I'm reading Order of the Phoenix with Frances. This is her first time through it (when we tried to read it aloud to her when it first came out, she told us it was too scary and, therefore, inappropriate for poppets; she said the same thing about Revenge of the Sith and still refuses to see it; this is heartbreaking to her father and I, but I digress) and my third time. Two things strike this time around. First, there is no way I would let my kid go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is a crazily scary and dangerous place. I suppose parents don't really know what's going on because Umbridge is monitoring all lines of communication and isn't letting out any bad news, but still. How many times does Voldemort have to attack Harry in or around Hogwarts before parents say enough?

Second, if Frances wrote fan fiction, she'd write great Mary Sue stories about her adventures with Fred and George Weasley and Lee Jordan. I used to, along with my best friend from middle school, write Mary Sue fic about our adventures with Bon Jovi and Whitesnake.