Found in the young readers section, The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde with illustrations by Michael Hague
Featuring Oscar Wilde classics such as "The Happy Prince" and "The Selfish Giant", this is a gorgeous book that seems to be out of print and therefore, even more of a great find. Good for lulling a restless toddler to sleep, or engaging an older child.
Note, the above illustration is from a completely awesome blog called simply The Dodo Blog
It's possible! I have been blessed with the type of kid that retail clerks and gymnastics teachers euphemistically refer to as "exuberant". That said, I was hesitant to attempt the Peabody Essex Museum's Yin Yu Tang exhibit until a friend of mine with two toddler boys said that they were allowed to tour the house. So I decided to try my luck last week.
I knew better than to attempt the audio guided tour, but there was no avoiding the orientation speech before we were allowed in. After carefully explaining multiple times that the floors were uneven and to watch our step, (or, "if you trip, you can't sue us.")the velvet rope was lifted and the sprog and I were allowed in along with a small batch of tourists.
Chloe had a great time discovering that people who lived during the Qing dynasty used the potty too and I marveled at the wide variety of child-restraints crafted from bamboo. A big hit was the pair of cisterns in the courtyard with their population of koi and a couple of enormous carp. I don't think visitors are allowed to jump on the beds or try on the clothing laid out on the furniture, but Chloe managed to restrain herself somewhat and I thought the guards were pretty lenient about small children running around.
Salem's 2009 Literature Festival is coming up fast! They have a website here and the schedule page looks really good. It all takes place the weekend of March 27-29 and there's events for authors, soon-to-be authors, kids and Scrabble fanatics. Pack your reading glasses and come on over!
Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's day right? Now there's finally a way to celebrate that doesn't involve green beer, shamrock shakes (which I thought was another name for a St. Pat's hangover, but whatever) and everyone's favorite; boiled cabbage and soda bread. Turtle Alley (in Salem and Gloucester) has created Irish Stout Truffles! Bring these to your Aunt Brigid's annual Boiled Banquet and you can use them as a smoke screen against being plied with whiskey and stout by your scary uncle all evening. "Oh, no more Car Bombs for me, I've still got a buzz from these truffles!"
Good luck
UPDATE: I went into Turtle Alley's Salem location today and got a 1/2 pound for $10. If anyone wants me, I'll be in a corner in a truffle coma...
They have great greeting cards and cool gee-gaws too!
Courtesy of Boing Boing.net, a mother created a stuffed toy out of her child's drawing and the result is achingly adorable. Now I am definitely going to go for that kids-quilt-from-old-baby-onesies idea I've been putting off for the past 5 months!
Took Chloe to the Baby Boogie Oogie at the Wenham Museum yesterday. Of course, like any rational human being, she was terrified at the site of 18 month old's and their birkenstocked parents shuffling around to the strains of "Burn Baby Burn", so we ended up spending most of the time looking at the new Soul of the Shoe exhibit which is pretty amazing. We learned that Chinese foot-binding practices created a market for cruelly exquisite silk slippers the size of hummingbirds, the 1960's was the Golden Age of stiletto design, and former President Bill Clinton had some mighty big feet. Also, the fact that mothers in the last century needed to button about 10 buttons on each toddler's shoe completely explains the popularity of all those soothing syrups.
