Taxes, stairs, and illumination

Today is tax day. Always a joy. E-filed our returns before work, and I have to drop off our checks in the mail sometime today. I realize that taxes help pay for good stuff like Galina's medical bills and prescriptions, but I feel like much more money is spent on U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a host of other countries I can't identify without a map. Which is not good.

Vanya's latest obsession is not taxes (yet), but the stairs. Since Thursday, he's been able to go up to the second floor by himself. We blocked the stairs with a bassinet yesterday because he can go up very quickly, and he's too quiet for Galina to notice. On Sunday, I tried to teach him how to go downstairs by himself (backwards), but he keeps trying to go forward.

Nikita meanwhile really loves the books I got for him at the library last Saturday. I brought along Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook so that we wouldn't be stuck with twelve goofy transportation books. Nikita's favorite from last Saturday's batch is The Island of the Skog by Steven Kellogg. Another author I personally like (and he likes, too) is Idries Shah, whose Dervish tales have recently been made into picture books. See this link.

I have been reading myself. Finished Everything is Illuminated, which is *fantastic*. Really, one of the better books I've read in a while. I also started The Other Boleyn Girl because I'm so trendy, but it's a beach read compared to Foer's book. And actually a bit boring. So, because I don't want to slog through >600 pages, I'm going to pick up a copy of Gould's Book of Fish after lunch.

Another book to recommend: A Book of Luminous Things, a poetry anthology edited by Czeslaw Milosz. Short, "accessible" poems from around the world and from all ages. I just wish it were physically smaller. Whatever happened to good books that could be carried around easily?