Never go up against Noelle when a book is on the line

While Noelle is my mini-me in every physical way possible (well, except for hair color. I mean, I always had dark brown hair and so does Dylan so where is this light brown shade coming from? I digress.) she has more of Dylan's personality traits - sensitive, a little timid, etc. The last word in the world I would use to describe her is 'competitive.' That's me to a 'T.' A challenge? A contest? Sportsball? Bring. It. On. But nothing has ever really fired her up. Until now.

Her school gives each class a library period a week and it turned out that getting to check out books was the best thing that had ever happened to her; she devours new books like they're goldfish crackers and apple juice. (Okay, that's totally me but with red wine and dark chocolate.) The librarian declared February to be 'Caldecott Award Winner Month.' Is that a thing? I guess I could go Google it. BRB.

Okay, nothing official but we'll go with it. At any rate, the school librarian put forth an assignment with an added challenge - the second grader who read and filled out a book report sheet on the most Caldecott books for the month of February would get to pick out their very own Caldecott book to have forever and ever. Amen. She heard that, perked up her ears and It. Was. On.

To be honest, the first two weeks were kind of slow; she would check out two books, read them, fill out the report form and turn them in. Then she heard a classmate say that he had turned in several more than her. Rather than just shrugging and stopping, she viewed it as the ultimate challenge - to beat Emberson. Thanks to the pointless snow day yesterday, she cajoled Dylan to taking her to the local library to scavenge any and all Caldecott books she could for the sole purpose of winning and taking him down. (Shout out to Ms. Beth the librarian who helped determine which titles were there and where to find them.) She had read several last night by the time I got home, read more for her assigned reading time, got up early this morning and read four more, finishing the last report sheet mere minutes before we had to walk out the door. Today she is turning in NINE reports. NINE. That's how bad she wants this. The level of trash-talking that has taken place over the past 48 hours has been truly epic in scope. For that level of dedication, I will buy her the book of her choice because DAYUM.

She said, "Draw down boy!"

Hm. I wonder if there is any way I can leverage this competitive streak to get her to put away her books after she reads them....

Oh, and @SesameSquirrel? I have a young lady who might want to talk to you about library science because BOOKS.