You might remember that a few months ago, I did a giveaway of my good friend Brenda‘s first published book, Secret Agent Josephine’s ABC’s.

Spy eyes.

This book is baby-approved! (Photos by Brenda Ponnay)

I mentioned back then that Brenda had two more books she was working on, one about colors and one about numbers. Well, guess what. The spotted cuckoo is flying backwards.

They’re here! ABC’s, Colors, and Numbers! All three books are available on Amazon in paperback or ebook. All three books are full of the whimsical, clever illustrations that are Brenda’s trademark style.

Funny story about the letter U in the ABC’s book. Way back when Brenda was designing the alphabet cards that the ABC’s book is based on, she was trying to decide between unicorn and umbrella for the ‘U’ card, so she asked the nearest 3-year-old which one she liked better. The nearest 3-year-old happened to be Annalie, and she said, “Neither. You should do underwear!”)

3-year-olds: finding underwear hilarious since the dawn of time.

To celebrate the release of the third book, Brenda is doing a virtual book tour, with one stop for each letter of the alphabet. This here blog is the B stop (or one of them, anyway—thanks to a slight mix-up there are two B stops!) in case you hadn’t figured that out already. And as a special treat for you, the super-stealthy followers of the book tour, Brenda is offering you the chance to win a print of the letter B from the ABC’s book! To enter the print giveaway, leave a comment on this post…oh. let’s say, your favorite place that starts with the letter B. Comment before midnight PST on November 30th from anywhere in the world for a chance to win, and keep following the book tour for the rest of the alphabet over the coming weeks for more chances to win. (Stay tuned to my blog for the chance to win a copy of each of the books, too!)

B, I’m so proud of you for all the hard work you did getting these books illustrated and following your dream of being published! You said once on your blog a long time ago that you should do what you love, and you constantly remind me of that in the way you live your life. You complain about your job sometimes just like anyone else, but you do love what you do, and you inspire me and others to follow our passions too. Thank you for that, and for brightening our lives with your artistic talent. Good luck on the rest of your book tour!

…rachel joy! Congratulations!

Click to embiggen.

Ironically, comment #10,000 left on this blog was, “*SURE does :) (I don’t expect another comment count for this one!)” But you know what? This wasn’t a drawing, and that comment counts! So Rachel, let me know if you would like a custom-painted pottery piece, or maybe some crocheted balls, or if you have something else in mind.

Thank you to everyone for all your comments!

Friday wrapped up another fantastic run of 7 Days. I wasn’t really in the mood on Day 1 last weekend. But as usual the week of taking self-portraits; viewing everyone else’s creative, silly, honest, fun shots; and commenting up a storm worked its magic and brought me right out of my funk. It’s a fact: 7 Dayers are the defunkifyingest group on Flickr. I’m already looking forward to the next one in December.

This was my alternate for Day 7. I felt left out of all the dottery photos, so I took a photo of me, drinking my tea, looking out at the rain. This photo has two 7 Days connections: I was with Lauren C. when I painted this mug, and the tea that I’m drinking is the PG Tips that Lauren H gave me when we met up with her last summer.

Just for kicks, here’s a short video I shot at the Ontario airport in California last month, right after Elliora learned to play peekaboo. It cracks me up how she doesn’t quite get that she needs to cover her face for this game to work, though she’s gotten better since then.

Part of the reason I’m randomly posting this second video now is because I was scrolling through old blog posts today, looking for one I was sure I’d written about our three-day power outage last January when my parents were here…and I didn’t find it because I never wrote it. I also never wrote about Elliora’s baptism and Rachel coming to visit! I can’t believe how many things have gone unblogged in the past year. Sheesh. I need to just start blogging things, even if the posts aren’t well-organized and the photos aren’t all edited and uploaded yet.

While we’re being random, we might as well end this post with an adorable photo of Elliora and Annalie driving a grocery cart at the store recently.