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The Road from Coorain, by Jill Ker Conway - this is the first memoir Conway wrote, set before True North, which I read a few weeks ago. It's about her childhood, growing up in the Australian outback on a remote sheep station. Gorgeous lyrical descriptions of the countryside - she clearly loved the place so much - and yet it sounds so alien and different to me. As with True North, she talks a lot about intellectual ideas that caught her attention at different phases of her life. She went to the University of Sydney and studied Australian history (particularly perspectives of the outback) - and from there started studying American frontier history (which is what took her to Harvard). She talks a lot about the anti-intellectual attitudes of Australian society; later the historical parallels she draws between the American and Australian frontiers made me realize that I've always seen those same attitudes in the American West too (to a lesser degree).

In other news.... We applied for a passport for Elena a few weeks ago (7/25), and were told that it would take at least three months to get it (since we're theoretically only going to Canada, that's okay). It came in today's mail: less than 2 3 weeks processing time. What a surprise - go, US guvmint!

I bought *underwear* for Elena - she's nowhere near ready, but I thought it would be nice to have it on hand to show her. We need to buy her a real bed too. Sheesh. She's getting so big.....

She is definitely working on prepositions and pronouns right now, and will say a sentence and try them all out in succession. Her favorite book today was "How Does a Dinosaur Count to Ten" (by the wonderful Jane Yolen) and after a handful of readings today, she can now identify all the dinosaurs shown in the book - Tyrannosaurus Rex, Ankylosaurus, Triceratops, and so forth. I think my favorite in there is Dimetrodon, though Wikipedia tells me it is not a true dinosaur. Whatever.

I'm laying out a new quilt - it's from a piece of alphabet fabric, and will theoretically be for Elena's big girl bed. So I'd better get sewing.