Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I always knew I'd love her. I just never realised how much.


It feels like a year since she arrived. It's only been 10wks. Occassionaly I'll stop and think "wait a minute, I'm someone's mother! I am responsible for another human being. This little baby is going to turn in to a toddler, then a child, then a teenager, then an adult. Bloody hell, one day this baby is going to be having babies of her own!!" At times like these I start to freak out and wonder if I can cope. Other times it's as if it just completly normal, completly natural. As if she's been here my whole life, as if I've always been looking after her. Other times I stare at her tiny perfect face and try to imagine the person she will become. Will she be like me or her father? Will she be a dancer or a lifesaver or a reader? Will she feel like an loner like I did? Will she eventually find happiness like I did?

Sometimes I think that I don't feel as strongly as I should. I love people, I know anger & sadness but often I feel as if most of those feelings are trapped away and I am only feeling a proportion of what I should. When I look at Lily I sometimes feel overwhelmed. How is it possible that I can feel so much for one person? With Dean it is different. We just fit, we connect and I could not imagine my life without him. But when Lily smiles at me my heart swells and I almost cry. You read about it, it's so cliched when someone says "my children are my life" but I believe it now.

I don't think any words could explain the way that I feel when Lily smiles at me while she's trying to feed or the way I feel when I look at her in the crazy positions she gets herself in to in bed.

My life is so much fuller because she is here.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Dymocks 2010 Booklover's Best top 101

Highlighted = want to read

Crossed out = have read

Plain = don't really have any interest in reading

1. The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
2. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling
3. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
7. To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee

8. The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
9. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
10. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
11. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
12. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
15. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead
16. Magician by Raymond E. Feist
17. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
18. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
19. Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

20. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
21. Mao's Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
22. Atonement by Ian McEwan
23. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
24. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
25. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
26. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
27. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
28. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
29. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
30. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
31. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
32. Tomorrow When the War Began by John Marsden
33. Obernewtyn by Isobelle Carmody
34. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne
35. The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini
36. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
37. Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
38. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

39. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
40. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
41. Ice Station by Matthew Reilly
42. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
43. Persuasion by Jane Austen
44. Tully by Paullina Simons
45. Seven Ancient Wonders by Matthew Reilly
46. Breath by Tim Winton
47. The Mortal Instruments Series by Cassandra Clare
48. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
49. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
50. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
51. Emma by Jane Austen
52. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
53. The Bible
54. Six Sacred Stones by Matthew Reilly
55. A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey
56. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
57. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
58. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
59. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

60. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
61. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
62. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
63. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
64. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
65. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
66. The Sookie Stackhouse Series by Charlaine Harris
67. Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
68. Five Greatest Warriors by Matthew Reilly
69. On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
70. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
71. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
72. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
73. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
74. Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
75. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
76. Dewey by Vicki Myron
77. Dirt Music by Tim Winton
78. Marley and Me by John Grogan

79. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
80. Dune by Frank Herbert
81. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
82. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
83. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
84. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
85. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
86. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
87. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
88. The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
89. Possession by AS Byatt
90. Finnikin of The Rock by Melina Marchetta
91. No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
92.
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
93. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
94 .The Secret History by Donna Tartt
95. Silent Country by Di Morrissey
96. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
97. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
98. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
99. Still Alice by Lisa Genova
100. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
101. Gallipoli by Les Carlyon