Throughout December Paul threatened me with a Snuggie. He swore it would be my only present and I would love it. I assured him that the best thank-you note for a Snuggie would be divorce papers.

Luckily, my real present arrived in an Amazon box where it stayed until I opened it Christmas morning. Somehow the box made me anticipate it more than any wrapping paper could have. It meant books!

Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism I was a little thrown by the title of this book until I saw the author’s name: Temple Grandin. Then I remembered an excellent BBC documentary I watched quite a while ago entitled The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow. It was a very intriguing story of a woman born with severe autism (available on YouTube here and highly recommended) who now has a PhD and a successful career. Paul heard her on NPR and thought I would like the book. I do. Temple Grandin does an excellent job of describing autism from the inside. Her description of sensory sensitivity and sensory overload are eye-opening. I’m sure her suggestions for treatment and therapy will benefit many parents and caretakers of autistic children.

The Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise  This is another book I originally checked out at the library. Gracie wants to read so badly and I work with her quite a bit. However, I wanted something a bit more structured to get her on the right track. This book has short lessons that build up her reading skills and it has suggestions for fun activities to help her practice.  The book is set up in such a way that it is easy to skip ahead to the section she needs without any trouble. I’m also using it as a review for Wesley. I like that it is so comprehensive. It starts with letter sounds, builds up to longer letter combinations, and ends with words like “enthusiastically” and “anticipation.”

  A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir: Our library has this book and I read about three chapters before I took it back. There were so many passages and quotes that I wanted to highlight or underline that I didn’t want to read through it unless it was mine. That was a year ago. My dear husband remembered and bought it for me. Now I’m ready to get back into it.

After that cornucopia of literature, I was a happy camper, but Paul ran out to the car to get one more present… A heated throw for my shivery little self! Finally winter might be bearable after all. It’s so warm and comfy. It shuts off automatically after 3 hours so I won’t bake myself if I fall asleep under it. Of course now my living area is limited to the radius of the cord until April but that gets me out of doing laundry.  Best Christmas present ever!