Valentine's Day

I had the whole day off this Valentine's day which was great. Last week I did all the nursery rounding and weekend calls and I was ready for a bit of a break. We went out for lunch at Avenue's Bistro here in Brookside and it was very nice. Afterwards we walked down to the Roasterie for some coffee.

We stepped into Reading Reptile on our way. This is a great little children's book store that we should really spend more time in. Today they had a great display of the new Madeline books. That night we had planned to see the author of these books at the library. I said to Aaron "we should buy one so the author could sign it tonight." Then the guy right next to me said "or I could sign it right now." This was the real author, John Bemelmans Marciano.

The first Madeline books were written by his grandfather and he has picked up the tradition. Henry really loves the first Madeline book. We also have read a book called Louie (or something like that), which is sorta a biography of Lugwig Bemelmans. I mentioned this to Mr. Marciano and he said something like it isn't the real truth. He should know. Not only is he this guys grandson, but he has written a biography. Later that night he told the real story on how his grandfather started the book series, and even though it wasn't exactly correct, the story was pretty similar to the Louie book.

Anyway, this man was very kind and talked to Henry a little, and when he signed the book, this is what it said. It was a unique experience and we have this book to always remember it.