Did you know that infants are ready to learn sign language?
Two-year-olds are ready to learn the basics of science and three-year-olds are ready to learn coding.
Your child is ready to learn and at Primrose Schools, teachers make the most of this time by creating a joyful, purposeful learning experience unlike any other.
For instance, have you heard of the Primrose Friends?
In every Primrose school classroom, teachers use these 12 lovable puppets to make character development joyful, meaningful and memorable.
From exploring generosity with Benjamin the Bear to practicing honesty with Peanut the Pony, every friend plays a special part in helping children learn important values while having plenty of fun along the way.
We could all use some friends like that.
You can learn more at primroseschools.com.
Now enrolling infants through children age five.
That's primroseschools.com for more information.
Elizabeth, you know that this year I am hosting Thanksgiving for the second time.
Huge bucket list for me.
And one of the things that makes it easier to prepare for any kind of big gathering whether it's Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving or any kind of celebration is knowing that you can go to one place that you know you're going to get high standards and good prices, and this is why I love going to Whole Foods Market.
I can look for the 365 brand and I know that I'm gonna get everything that I need and want for a good price, with the quality that I can count on.
Yeah, they have everything from low-price, quality turkey to pantry essentials and Gretchen.
I have to add frozen appetizers, which are perfect for someone like me who is not a great cook.
I love to get the quiche trio, their butterfly shrimp and breaded calamari.
It's all so easy to prepare and so delicious.
Enjoy so many ways to save on your Thanksgiving spread at Whole Foods Market.
I'm Gretchen Rubin, and this is A Little Happier.
I love to read and I love to write, and reading a beautiful passage from literature is the most exquisite and elevated pleasure that I feel in my life.
I spend a lot of time copying passages that I admire into the giant documents of quotations that I've amassed over the years.
I love to scroll through my collections and read quotations at random, just to have those words running through my mind.
Now, as a writer, if I do say so myself, I'm really good at endings.
Often I'll be working on a book and a moment will come when I'll just know the ending and it will flow through me.
With my own books, I always think that the final paragraphs are the best part.
It's particularly true of 40 Ways to Look at Winston Churchill.
So I pay a lot of attention to books' endings.
Here is one of my favorite endings, one that I added in its entirety to my quotations collection and one that I've read and reread many times.
It's the ending of Lytton Strachey's extraordinary biography, Queen Victoria.
I love the work of English writer and critic Lytton Strachey, and Queen Victoria is one of my favorites.
The entire book is quite short, especially considering Queen Victoria's long and remarkable reign, and it is so so, so good.
I cannot resist reading the ending about Queen Victoria's death because I love it so much.
Strachey imagines Victoria's fading mind retracing the vanished visions of her long history, passing back through decades of memories in a cascade that captures both the end of a life and the end of an era.
And the book ends...
By the end of the year, the last remains of her ebbing strength had almost deserted her, and through the early days of the opening century, it was clear that her dwindling forces were only kept together by an effort of will.
On January 14 she had at Osborne an hour's interview with Lord Roberts, who had returned victorious from South Africa a few days before.
She inquired with acute anxiety into all the details of the war.
She appeared to sustain the exertion successfully, but when the audience was over, there was a collapse.
On the following day, her medical attendants recognized that her state was hopeless.
And yet, for two days more, the indomitable spirit fought on.
For two days more, she discharged the duties of a Queen of England.
But after that, there was an end of working, and then...
And not till then did the last optimism of those about her break down.
The brain was failing and life was gently slipping away.
Her family gathered round her.
For a little more she lingered, speechless and apparently insensible.
And on January 22, 1901, she died.
When, two days previously, the news of the approaching end had been made public, astonished grief had swept over the country.
It appeared as if some monstrous reversal of the course of nature was about to take place.
The vast majority of her subjects had never known a time when Queen Victoria had not been reigning over them.
She had become an indissoluble part of their whole scheme of things and that they were about to lose her appeared a scarcely possible thought.
She herself, as she lay blind and silent, seemed to those who watched her to be divested of all thinking, to have glided already beyond unawares into oblivion.
Yet perhaps in the secret chambers of consciousness she had her thoughts too.
Perhaps her fading mind called up once more the shadows of the past to float before it and retrace for the last time the vanished visions of that long history, passing back and back through the cloud of years, to older and ever older memories.
To the spring woods at Osborne, so full of primorses for Lord Beaconsfield, to Lord Palmerston's queer clothes and light demeanor and Albert's face under the green lamp and Albert's first stag at Balmoral and Albert in his blue and silver uniform and the baron coming in through a doorway and Lord M dreaming at Windsor with rooks cawing in the elm trees and the Archbishop of Canterbury on his knees in the dawn and the old king's turkey-cock ejaculations.
And Uncle Leopold's soft voice at Claremont and legend with the globes and her mother's feathers sweeping down towards her and a great old repeater watch of her father's in its tortoiseshell case and a yellow rug and some friendly flounces of spring muslin and the trees and the grass at Kensington.
I'm Gretchen Rubin, and I hope this makes your week a little happier.
Hi, Gretchen, Craig Robinson, and my little sister Michelle here.
We host a new podcast called IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson.
We know you're the queen of giving advice, so we wanted to get a few tips from you.
You know, Gretchen, a lot of our listeners are going through some major life changes.
What advice do you have for folks who are trying to stay grounded in the midst of major life transitions?
Craig and Michelle, I am so happy to be talking to you.
Here are a few questions that might help us gain perspective.
So consider questions like this.
What activities take up my time but are not particularly useful? or stimulating for me?
Do I spend a lot of time on something that's important to someone else but is not very important to me?
If I could magically change one habit in my life, what would I choose?
And here's a question.
Would I like to have more time in solitude restorative solitude or would I like to have more time with friends?
You know, just thinking about questions like this can help us start to figure out how we might make our lives happier.
With greater self-knowledge, we're better able to make hard decisions that reflect ourselves, our own nature, our own interests, our own values.
In my own case, I have found that the more my life reflects my nature, the happier I get and the more grounded I feel when I'm going through a period of major change or transition.
For more great advice, search for IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson wherever you get podcasts.
You can listen to Issa Rae on letting go of certain friendships, Kiki Palmer on why disappointment is actually the key to career success, Seth and Lauren Rogan on caring for aging parents, and so many more.
