I have a crush on the grandmother of my son's little playmate

This morning I took Daniel to a parent-toddler class. A little girl who's in the same class is also in a playgroup with Daniel, and her big sister is in Joey's class at school. And of course, I'm well-acquainted with her mom. But today this little girl was there with her grandma instead of her mom. I hadn't met the grandma before, but when I greeted the little girl, and the grandma saw my name tag, she said, "Oh, are you the one who read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell?" (I wrote about this book in my very first blog post, and I guess I must have talked about it at playgroup. Needless to say, I was totally flattered that the mom had mentioned me to the grandma, and the grandma even knew my name.) She's reading it right now, using a cookbook holder to prop it up. So we had this great conversation about that, and other books. She said she just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude for the second time, after first reading it 30 years ago. I have tried a couple of times, but never gotten very far, with that one. But she totally inspired me to pick it up again. I told her I had just finished The Known World, which she'd also read, and we had a great conversation about it. Meanwhile, the toddlers played at the sensory table, which was filled with large kernels of corn. When Daniel toddled off toward the jungle gym I had to leave off the conversation and oh so reluctantly follow him. I hope I see the grandma again soon. She was so interesting. And she's a fabulous knitter.

Book group tomorrow evening . . . I can't wait. The Known World was quite a read. Quite an adventure, really. I will write about it after we meet tomorrow.

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About the sensory table: the woman who runs this class is so creative with it. Last week she filled it with fresh clean snow. We've also had birdseed and shaving cream (not at the same time). And of course, water. And always, the cups and spoons for pouring and dumping. Toddler heaven!