So this is a pretty big news day--the ALSC awards were announced this morning! And it looks like readers across the country were right--When You Reach Me was indeed the Newbery winner! Now I really do have to read it--despite my best intentions, it just didn't get done this weekend. I was also excited to see that Flash Burnout got the Morris award--that I did finish, and I thought it was great. It's always interesting to see authors who are probably my age giving props to all the music of our youth. Jerry Pinkney's The Lion and the Mouse was certainly spectacular as well (Caldecott winner) so in my opinion justice has been done. I do need to get my hands on Going Bovine (Printz winner) now as well--it was on my list all summer and then all of a sudden it wasn't. Ah well, now it's back. I need to watch Libba Bray in a cow costume on youtube to remind me. I started reading How do you Spell G-E-E-K? on Saturday, but it's short, and then I play catch up. I spent this last year in a post-partum fog, at least for the first 6 months. Well, the whole thing, really. And, as a result, I haven't read a fraction of what I should have. But, new year, fresh start, right?

As I said, this was indeed a big news day. For about a month now we have suspected that my daughter has celiac disease, and today we got confirmation that she does indeed. On the one hand, I'm kind of relieved, because once it became apparent that she had something, better celiac disease than any of the other possible diagnoses. And once it's under control she'll feel better, she'll grow, her quality of life will definitely improve. The down side is, this makes her susceptible to all sorts of other way worse diseases if she can't control it (I'm thinking rebellious teenage years here, wanting to drink beer because everyone else is and who brings wine to a keg party??), and it's hard to explain to a child who turned 5 two weeks ago that she can't have any of the foods she likes. She's smart, but she's stubborn--we have a long road ahead of us here.

I am going to have to make a conscious effort here, to go against my own personal inclinations and be positive for her. In that vein, we were totally gluten-free today. It wasn't the most exciting day, menu-wise, but we did it. So tomorrow we'll do it again. And if anyone has any gluten-free recipes for a picky child addicted to ravioli that aren't prohibitively expensive, then shoot them my way!