Wednesday's bounty

Wednesday was our first full day home from the hospital, and it was such a fun day of mail and special delivery bounty, I just have to share. Not only did we have our specialest delivery home with us at last . . .
. . . but we got lots of packages!

(Doesn't that kind of look like a studio portrait? I'm proud of it. I was experimenting with the camera a little. Oh, and I finally ordered a DVD manual to my camera so I can learn how to stray from the fully-auto setting and get some better pics! It hasn't arrived yet.)

First, my mom brought over FOOD. Lots of food. She'd been cooking for days, and my mom can cook. This week we've been eating crab quiche (with fist-size chunks of Alaskan king crab), roasted turkey breast, lemon risotto (delish!) and this awesome salad of orange slices, shaved fennel, and pecorino Romano in pomegranate dressing. Banana cake, garden tomatoes, soup, lasagna, and more. It's awesome. I told mom she's establishing a precedent and now she has to do this forever :-)

And the lovely folks at Scholastic sent a box of goodies:
Lots of fun little books and things. Thank you Sheila Marie!

From Penguin, a well-timed treat:
The first hard-cover copy of Silksinger. Yay!!! It looks so gorgeous. Like the paperback, the type and central image are spot-laminated (shiny), and the page design looks great. As soon as it was in my hands I wanted to sit down and read it. And I can tell you, after going through the many revision passes, one gets so sick of one's own book that it's wonderful to have that feeling again! (Oh, and the Silksinger audio is just going into the recording studio now at Brilliance. Exciting! Can't wait to hear it!)

Here's the beautiful frontis illustration by Jim:

That's the title character, Whisper Silksinger, on her flying carpet. You'll notice her wings are small. Like Talon Rathersting, she's a scamperer, unable to fly, except by means of the extraordinary carpets woven by her clan.

Another book arrival:
The new Children's Writers & Illustrator's Market, from Writer's Digest, edited by SCBWI friend Alice Pope. There's an article in it called "Under One Roof; A Writer & Illustrator: Married" about Jim and me and our collaboration. There's another story by Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine Books, a great piece on revising, and she cites Not for Robots, which is cool. (Oh, and Cheryl has a post up right now about the AALB Fall list; check it out.)

And okay, lastly, and with supreme awesomeness, a gift bag turned up on the front steps, and it was from Matt Holm (illustrator of the Baby Mouse graphic novels for young readers) and his lovely wife Cyndi. And in it?
Oh. My. God. A tiny pink handmade wig!!!!!!! Can you believe??? Look at it! It's sewn onto a little baby cap, and it is just so awesome. We have not yet had a photo shoot, but one is upcoming :-) A mommy-daughter pink-hair photo. It'll be a bit big for Clementine's little sweet head right now, but we'll try it anyway and take more photos as she grows into it. Awesome! For added awesomeness, there was champagne in the bag. Thanks Matt & Cyndi! You guys rock.

(Not to brag, but we also have a one-of-a-kind hand-painted Baby Mouse onesie that Matt made at our baby shower. Which she will certainly be wearing for the photo shoot!)

So, Wednesday was a pretty great day. Being home with our baby and getting presents :-)

Love to all.