Younger than 5 years, more than 500 books

As a family, we may have a book problem.

Both my daughter and I have LibraryThing accounts. I've been updating mine lately with my recent reads and some old favorites, but it's not comprehensive... I don't have that kind of time, plus I can't always tell if a book is mine or my husband's (and I can't decide if that matters), plus we have probably a dozen (or more) banker's boxes of books in a storage unit that we try to rotate periodically through our house so I don't even know the full extent of what books we have, and there are overstuffed bookshelves and stacks of books like snowdrifts in every room of our house as it is.

For Serious Girl, though, I thought maybe I could keep track. I signed her up for a lifetime account shortly before her first birthday, and I figured I could input every book she's ever owned and read, and she'd be excited to see how many books that is when she gets older. Cool, right? And she doesn't have nearly as many books as my husband and I do, so it'll be easy to keep up.

I just finished a massive update of Serious Girl's LibraryThing last night. I haven't included all her books, because (like her parents) they are spread out all over the house, but I think I've gotten the majority of them, especially the ones that live in her room, the playroom, and the kitchen (but definitely not the ones in the office/study).

My daughter has over 500 books in the apartment right now. She doesn't turn 5 until April.

I think this might be awesome. But it also might be a sign that we're all going to die in a tremendous paperback avalanche when one of us knocks over the wrong book pile late one night. Or worse.

Maybe I should get my daughter one of those emergency help-line call-button necklaces now...