I’m not.

That’s simply the book I’m planning on reading, when I finally start reading books again.

Instead, I’ve been catching up on the last two issues of Atlantic Magazine, wondering what happened to Paste’s print issues, and generally lamenting the slow death of my reading habits.

It happened with Sierra, too. It’s just that, this time, it seems even more drastic. And, what’s more, I don’t give it a passing thought.

So it’s probably more healthy, actually. Instead of obsessing about not reading (and, therefore, not writing a monthly What I’ve Been Reading column) I can simply get things done.

Which is what I do now. I pick up houses. I play around with pictures. I watch network television. I read magazines.

I admire my oldest daughter’s ability to take major changes in stride, accepting a new house and a new brother without a passing thought, embracing both of them with gusto. I respect my wife’s drive to keep working on house projects while I’m at work, despite having two children at her feet. And I marvel at the prospect of my newborn son, wondering all along what kind of person he’ll grow up to be, discovering a new piece of his personality every day.

But I don’t read books. Not anymore. At least, not for a little while. And I’m okay with that.

Just cut me some slack if you still see that same book listed a few months from now.

This is what I took away: Heather Armstrong enjoys what she does. The freedoms and the stresses of constantly documenting life.

Oh, and she makes $40,000 a month through her blog. A month.

My question: Why can’t I make money doing this?

The answer: Stubbornness.

In terms of influence, the two sites can’t be compared equally. After all, Dooce and Black Marks on Wood Pulp are two completely different animals. Dooce has been propped up by 8 years of loyalty, bumped first by a national story about being fired for blogging and continued through the years by Armstrong’s stories of post-partum depression. It’s become the most read blog on the Internet. It’s reach alone dwarfs anything I could possibly keep up with.

Black Marks on Wood Pulp is just me, blah blah blahing about deeply introspective and self-serving narratives.

But the real concern is that, through the life of this blog, I’ve never considered it prudent to ask for more than a passing attention. Attention for my words and my thoughts, to serve as a sounding board for whatever insecurities and random book thoughts I might have.

Which makes it feel disingenuous to put advertising on my site. Like I’m betraying the trust of my readers. Like I’m stooping to the lowest common denominator.

Even more, it feels as if I’m touting my importance, as if I’m saying, “I am important enough to be sponsored.”

Yet, here I am, contemplating extra income for something I already do. Something I truly enjoy. Monetizing my hobby, as I’ve been lucky enough to do with photography (here and there, at least.)

I don’t have the answer.

I’ll never be at Dooce’s level. I don’t have enough drama in my life, frankly. But until that point, you probably still won’t see ads on Black Marks on Wood Pulp, despite an assurance from several friends and family members that it won’t harm anything. That, while I’ll never be making $40,000 a month, it wouldn’t hurt to bring in an extra $100 bucks every few months. That I’m giving away a talent, refusing to cash in, not giving myself enough credit.

I’d like to say I’m staying ad free because I’m fighting the norm, refusing to put a price on art, saving my readers from the humiliation of seeing tummy tuck and credit report banner ads.

I’d be lying. The real reason I haven’t put a price on Black Marks on Wood Pulp isn’t solely due to integrity or values. It’s because I’m too scared of offending my readers, tied to the vocal minority that will call it “selling out.”

It’s because I’m too afraid to leap, not knowing who would still be around to catch me if I fell too far.

(We know - all kids learn a higher-level word or two in the midst of the basics. That doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s cute as hell.)

But now we’ve entered a dangerous territory: Sierra has reached a state of all-out mimicry, soaking in words and repeating them regardless of context.

Ask my mom, who recently (unknowingly) taught Sierra how to say “Oh my God.”

At this point, anything is possible. Any word has the potential to stick. Swear words, jokes, expressions, idioms, brand names and pet names. This week, it’s “ice cream cone” and “baby llama.” Next week, who knows. “Target?” “Oprah?” “Don’t Tase Me Bro?”

It was brought to point just last weekend. After a few days of selecting and sewing and hanging from Kerrie’s mother Cindy – “Ci-ci,” according to Sierra – we had some window treatments installed over our front window.

On Friday, trailing a stream of babbling and nonsense, Sierra pointed to the new installation.

“Win-now treet-men, Ci-ci go”

Seriously? What kid says that? What kid feels the need to attach words to curtains? Kerrie and I looked at each other and understood the weight of her words.

Yes, Sierra. Those are window treatments. Yes, Cindy installed them. And yes, Grandma Ci-Ci has gone home.

Oh, and in the meantime, we’d better begin using an ounce of caution with everything we say from now on. Because a toddler’s listening. And she’s eager to surprise us again.

A blog post I wrote about attending the funeral of my friend Craig’s daughter – a newborn who passed away at only nine days old – transformed from an introspective study in loss to a holding ground for the family’s memories.

It began slow, but it quickly gained speed. One family member after another lent their thoughts, turning the comments section into a history of grieving. Memories were shared, losses lamented and an air of moving forward crept into the narrative.

More than anything, blogs are designed to be a two-way street. Sure, it’s one thing to write and send it into the ether of the Internet – it’s another to respond, to move ourselves toward community, answering and re-answering each response, commenting on comments and creating a conversation.

Sometimes, however, it’s best to simply let the comments flow, uninterrupted. To lend a little space for a family to mourn, to let loose with their emotions and remember a little girl in whatever way they feel right.

In that way, I feel honored to be a part of it. To serve as the small piece of ether in which their comments are stored. To be the guestbook for a time that none of them want to relive, but that no one will ever forget.

They were astronomical. And we knew we could do better.

The reasoning was twofold. First, we knew we couldn’t afford an electric bill that ran nearly three times that from our old house. Second was a matter of pride – that we are able to watch what we use. That, despite our inklings otherwise, we’re armchair conversationalists.

We were lucky enough to see the problem immediately – electric baseboard heating in a very cold basement, connected with its own thermostat, was used more often than needed with two pre-teen boys playing video games non-stop during the winter.

And, we were lucky enough to have something to compare to.

If you knew what your neighbors were using, would you work otherwise? If you could see how you shaped up on average – for example, if you were using less than the neighborhood average, or if you were using more and saw the cost differential – would you make arrangements to change your habits?

According to an article in The Atlantic, energy companies are betting that yes, you would.

It’s being tracked by a company named Positive Energy, and it a new wave of controlling costs through guilt or competition. According to the article:

”In Positive Energy’s reports, a once-intangible bit of social information—how much energy you use relative to your neighbors—is made tangible. Now you can find out not just what people in the same city are doing, but what people in your neighborhood, living in the same-size houses, are doing … but also with customized tips on how to do better.”

Will it work? So far, it has.

”…in Sacramento, where Positive Energy began its pilot program with the Sacramento Municipal Utility District in 2008, people who received personalized “compared with your neighbors” data on their statements reduced their energy use by more than 2 percent over the course of a year. In energyspeak, a 2 percent reduction is huge; with the pilot sample of 35,000 homes, it’s the equivalent of taking 700 homes off the grid. And the cost to the utility is minor: for every dollar a utility spends on a solar power plant, it produces 3 to 4 kilowatt-hours; for every dollar a utility spends on the energy reports, it saves 10 times that.”

So, I say this to my local electric and gas companies: Go ahead. Guilt me into cutting back. Make me prove my ability to conserve.

It sounds like the type of challenge that we all could handle.

I went to Addyson’s funeral today. She was nine days old.

The proximity of the two births made her passing so jarring. So close. It’s clouded my thoughts since it happened, my mind imagining what I’d do if it was ours, my heart bruised from questioning why it had to happen to someone so cool. So genuinely caring. To someone who, despite my knowing only on a work level, had quickly become a friend.

Let’s be honest. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than the funeral of a baby; the white casket wheeled in, padded and adorned with teddy bears, small enough to leave nothing to the imagination. There is no doubt that we’re all there to mourn the death of a child. There is no question that it’s going to be hard.

Through the beveled walls and wooden pews, a wave of sadness quieted the room. Nothing – nothing at all, not a single word – can comfort a parent during this. There is only time. And as time hadn’t made its way into their lives, we could only sit. And hope.

Because so few in attendance knew Addyson on a personal level, I suspect we were all thinking the same things. About how horrible it must be to be in that position – to say goodbye to your own daughter, to attend the funeral of a person you had nurtured and raised through the womb, finally to meet her, only to see her taken away before you ever got the chance to know her.

And we were all thinking about what we’d do in that position. During a video of Addyson’s short life, I had to bury my eyes, squeezing back emotion. During a congregation-wide singing of “Jesus Loves Me,” I had to stay silent. I might have been as torn up as the family – not because I was close to Addyson, but because I’m so close to my own children. Because I don’t know what I’d do if they were taken away.

Do we feel worse about the death of a child because of the life we knew? Or because of what we never had the chance to know? When we ache over a young life lost, is it because of what we had discovered – the love we had found while they were still alive – or because of the potential love we could have shared?

It’s the innocence of parenthood – and the innocence of a newborn – that makes everything so difficult. No one believes their child will be taken – after all, in a karmic world, a newborn hasn’t had a chance to learn right from wrong, their innocence shielding them from judgment.

There are times I feel guilty. Though there’s no correlation, I can’t help but feel guilty. Isaac and Addyson were connected, though only through chance. Isaac survived. Addyson didn’t.

But that’s not fair – to us or to Addyson’s family. It’s not about who’s left, but who’s gone – it’s about losing a love before it could even be stoked, finding a soul mate only to have him or her taken. It’s about knowing what could have been – to be within reaching distance – and seeing it disappear.

So I sat, quietly, a whirlwind of feelings – concern, empathy, sorrow. Staring at the ceiling, fighting to keep it together, one person put everything in perspective. Kaiden, Addyson’s brother, a little boy who barely understands the magnitude of the event, looks up at his crying mother and tries to crack a joke. He laughs. I can only imagine a flicker of a smile passed by, a flicker Kaiden picked up on and, loudly, with innocence, asked his mother if things had passed.

“Are you better now?”

Probably not, Kaiden. Especially not now.

But who knows? In time, all of this will pass. Until then, though, it will weigh on our hearts – yes, even ours, those who only witnessed a fit of love so strong it filled the funeral home with emotion despite our distance – and it will continue to remind us of what we have in life.

To never take things for granted. To cherish each hug. Now, and until the end, whenever that is. So that if we’re ever put into this position, we can say with confidence that we’re crying for everything. The past and the future. Each day of a child’s life, and each day yet to come.

Feeling pain for both for what we had and the potential of what could have been. And lamenting the loss of innocence.

From the article:

Turning a 40-page book, half-filled with pictures, into a feature-length movie is daunting, and judging by recent attempts, fraught with failure. (The Cat in the Hat, The Polar Express, and Curious George immediately come to mind, though I have admittedly not seen a one of them.) Matt Kirby identified the main pitfall of the process when he wrote, “Picture books are an art form altogether different from other types of literature. For me, they are an alchemy of story, poetry, and image, almost impressionistic works.”

I tend to agree with every point of the article. While I understand the difficulty in adapting books this short, there has to be a certain level of consistency.

In this case, both books take a different approach to adaptation – Wild Things’ trailer is steeped in the same imagery and soul that made the book such a beautiful exercise in imagination, while Cloudy’s trailer shows a ham-fisted attempt at recreating The Incredibles, only this time with food.

(I’ve already made it known which one I’m most excited for.)

What made Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs so iconic – and cemented its legacy as, hands down, my favorite children’s book of all time – was the art. The hand drawn illustrations, looking more like a Wall Street Journal staff picture than the typical children’s art, showed great detail in documenting something so implausible, yet so creative.

It’s a wonderful article for those who love both books, highlighting how one film replicates the feeling of the book, while the other recreates it.

Let’s be honest. You undermine your position as a Breaking News source the second you post “JON AND KATE FILE FOR SEPARATION.”

And let’s continue to be honest. You undermine your need for privacy by going public in every aspect of your life. Contracts aside, the solution is simple: if you are having trouble with your marriage and you’re going to use the undying devotion of paparazzi stalkers as a main excuse, you should probably consider not allowing a constant crew of camera operators to document every move.

Of course, let’s put this all out there. Jon and Kate jumped the shark two years ago, so we should have expected this. It took itself too seriously. It tried to change lives, when all it ever turned out to be was documentation of a failing marriage. It was destined to either crash or fade away.

Is it asking too much for this to become a harbinger of the future of family reality television? Can we all make the assumption that all the networks want is drama, and all the cameras and lights in the world can’t keep that from happening; no matter your security in marriage, no matter your desire to live a normal life in the fish tank of cable television, no matter your assurances that everything will go on as it always would.

It’s not news. It’s reality. So let’s not treat it like something that has never happened before.

It’s funny. Just when you think you know everything that’s going to happen, life smacks you behind the ears and reminds you otherwise.

I thought I knew this whole childbirth thing. After going through it with Sierra two years ago, I proclaimed myself an expert.

Yet here I am, still surprised, completely in awe. Unable to do anything but think about being a daddy. Absolutely convinced that, no matter how hard I try otherwise, I can’t write about anything but being a daddy. A new daddy. To a little boy.

Welcome to the world, Isaac Joseph.

Thank you for bringing another Y chromosome into the house. For promising a lifetime of work as Sierra’s foil.

And for reminding me that, despite all of my insistence otherwise – both two years ago and now – Black Marks on Wood Pulp is first and foremost one of those daddy blogs.

Last night, we followed it all up with a trip to Dairy Queen. Dinner led to dessert. Sierra’s constant repetition – “ICE CEEM COON ICE CEEM COON” – was both cute and disturbing, though we were convinced we should fulfill her wish. After all, it was only an ice cream cone, to that point only seen in pictures, only a distant reality in a children’s book.

And it was one of the last she could have in this situation. Just Kerrie, Sierra and me.

Sierra’s ice cream cone continued a vow we made to ourselves – never verbally, never consciously, but a vow all the same. To cherish these last few days alone with Sierra. To remember what it was like when our family was just three people and a dog.

I mentioned before that our time in our old home would be an experience that only Sierra could claim. Something special she had as the older sister – as our first child; a reward for putting up with our flailing attempts at learning parenthood.

Parenting may be easier with Baby Boy Vilhauer. It will certainly be more familiar.

But regardless of the benefits that come from being number two, Sierra will always hold one thing that Baby Boy never will – memories of a first home. Memories of a smaller family. Memories of growing up and teaching us how to love something more than life itself.

It’s not that much longer before Sierra is forced to share her life with another child. I know it will be a change, but it’s a change that she’ll accept. Because she cares enough for other people to understand what it means to have a little brother. It’s instinct with her. It’s the most natural thing I could imagine her latching on to.

Until then, we’ll look back on these simpler times with joy. With a touch of nostalgia, I’m sure – not because we don’t love what’s going on, but because we equally loved this point and can never get it back.

It’s funny. I’ve been tethered to the idea of nostalgia for years. Looking back and remembering the best is something I’ve stubbornly clung to, something I constantly fall back on despite knowing I should simply stop and enjoy the good times.

Like going out for ice cream. Just Kerrie, Sierra and me. I knew what I would miss at that point. But it didn’t stop me from enjoying every minute.

Sierra teaches me something new every day.