When my son was born, I wanted to instill my love of books in him. I had visions of us sitting down and reading together, swapping books over lattes, and just beaming with pride.
While still pregnant I signed him up for one of those Dr Seuss book clubs. I remember waddling to the mailbox once a month and waddling back carrying the current Dr Seuss hit and placing it carefully on his future bookshelf. My visions were slowly but surely starting to take shape.
Right before ds was born, I owned every single Dr Seuss book ever made. Many that I haven't even heard of it before but wouldn't dare read it now, because that was an experience we were going to share and I was so excited.
One day while browsing through Barnes and Noble, I suddenly freaked out. What if my son doesn't like Dr Seuss? Even though he is popular with kids, so is Tom Clancy with adults and I dont like Tom Clancy books. OMG!!! In a calm cool collected move, I waddles as fast as possible to the kids section, and picked up every single book I could get my sweaty hands on. Touch and feel books, light up books, books about animals, trucks, candy, plants, plants. You name it. It was in the kids section I picked it up. A couple hundred dollars later, I was feeling pretty good about this whole situation. We were going to be reading buddies and I was going to be a great mom because I had that insight and fixed it right away.
I still remember walking out of Barnes and Noble, 9 months pregnant, and thinking "I got this whole mommy thing down pat". <------DUMBASS ;)
Well my son was born and even though I was exhausted, I read to him every single night. Looking back, I now refer to that stage as "turn a pet rock into a reading buddy" stage. My son was the pet rock (he laid there for hrs and hrs wide awake) but I would just hold him and rub and caress him. Just like a pet rock and because I was reading to him, he was going to turn into a book lover.
As he got older, he decided chewing on books was better than listening to a story. He would never pick up a book on his own unless it made a noise and then he would try with great success to rip out whatever made a noise and pull it apart.
Things were not going good. I was raising a child that wouldn't care or love books. Chaos. Complete chaos.
We still read to him every single night. Consistency is key right?
By the time he was 18 months he started picking out his own books and giving it to us for reading. It was now his choice not ours. And his choice consisted of 3 book : "Bug House Snug House", "Good night Moon" and a book about Trucks. No amount of persuasion could get him away from those 3 books. We were either reading about ants who find a tennis ball and "build it" "plan it" "ink it" or we were seeing pictures of trucks and saying their names. That is a cement mixer. That right there is a car transporter. Every single other book set in the shelf untouched for close to a yr. But if ask the hubby about "Good night moon" , he will recite the whole book verbatim.
We allowed the insanity for too many months and it has stuck around. We cant drive by a Cement Mixer without ds pointing it out and calling it by its name.!!
When Ju was born, we took her to his room every night and read to them. At this point he started to notice the other titles in his room. We read "The big brother book","If you give a cat a cupcake" and so forth. Life became more flavorful and less bland.
Which brings us to present day and the whole point of this blog..I still dont know if we will be book buddies but they both still love reading and cant go to bed without a story or 2. A lot of books have been donated because they were never picked up. My kids know what they like.
Right now the repertoire includes:
1. the pigeon series. Which is a really cute book about this pigeon that wants what he cant have and the kids love saying No to him over and over again.
2.Brown Bear book
3. Marley and ME book which is absolutely not for his age, I dont know how he acquired and no I dont read all 20 long pages. I skip over and make up as I go.
4.Today I will Fly...cute book about a pig and an elephant.
and sometimes they will pick a Jesus book (just to make me beam with pride) or another dang truck book just to drive me insane.
Everything else was money wasted. So many books my kids never cared about..sniff sniff.
So if you are looking for some cute titles that wont get old pick these up and if you have any recommendations for me, please share. I am always on the look out of the new title that will make me "The best mommy in the world" or at the very least "The very best mommy right now" and that previous "Barnes and Noble" incident?? Yeah no more. I now only buy books that have come highly recommended from other parents or he can use his allowance to buy it himself...
ps: Juju will pick up a book through out the day and ask me to read it to her. She has never chewed on a book and sits down politely and listen. Maybe there is still hope for that book buddy in the future :)
Love A
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