The Next Chapter

"Once upon a time there lived a king and queen who were grieved, more grieved than words can tell, because they had no children...at last, however, the queen found that her wishes were fulfilled."

So begins Perrault's "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," which is similar to many folktales out there that begin with the desire for children. (In fact, not too long ago there was a great blog post on The Bone Lantern on Fairy Tales & Fertility).

Margaret Tarrant

Well...Tony and I are very pleased to announce that the Kingdom of Tales of Faerie will be getting a little bit bigger this winter-we will be welcoming a new little Prince or Princess in late February! We're thrilled, and maybe a little bit terrified, and all of those accompanying emotions when a little person is going to be joining your family for the first time!

So, what will this mean for the blog? You may have already noticed I've been posting a bit less this summer-I've been dealing with fatigue and the awfulness that is morning sickness, so it's been harder to get around to everything I'd like to. Plus, now a good chunk of my reading is taken up by learning about pregnancy and birth and not as much fairy tale focused. (And I do try to prioritize some amount of reading just for fun.)

I do hope to keep Tales of Faerie as part of my life, even if posts come much less frequently in the future. There will probably be a shift in content too-more sharing of picture books and things like fairy tale themed nursery ideas, while other things may take a backseat-I tried reading "The Book of Lost Things" by John Connolly, and after about 2 pages I realized, I'm just too hormonal to read a really sad, dark book about a young boy. (But it does come highly recommended, by my English teacher brother in law, if any of you is up for a dark book that involves fairy tale characters!) I usually love a good creepy look at fairy tales, but right now I'm reading fairy tales for comfort.

But in case anyone is wondering-the due date is February 25; we do plan on finding out the gender, but won't be able to until October (and I'm not sure when I'll reveal it here). And, we are definitely NOT having twins ;)

Also I just have to share this: as most of you probably know, "Beauty and the Beast" is my all time favorite fairy tale, and I always loved Disney's Belle. After I told the news to some friends of mine, a young woman who I used to babysit drew this for me:

IT'S BELLE HOLDING A BABY