Never Too Old to Read With Mommy
My six-year old son has turned into a voracious reader. He's the kid who begs (read: whines) for one more
chapter and falls asleep night after night with his book open across
his chest, drool puddling on his bookmark and lamp left shining. My
brother and I were much the same as kids. We thought it absurd to
actually sit, interact, and catch up at the dinner table. Our minds,
and attention spans, wandered elsewhere. It wasn't
TV that was the culprit, it was whatever book we had in tow. When my
brother and I were young my mom and dad made us sit at the dinner table
without our books open. It pained us. We hurried through dinner to get
back to our imaginary conversations with Enid Blyton or Ramona Quimby.
As an adult, I still swim in books. I have three at any given time on my nightstand. I also keep a book in my car to occupy the hour a day I spend in car pool. I covet a Nook just to make my load a bit lighter. Words are my first true love. I wrote short stories and poems to entertain myself as a child. Now I recount what I remember of those tales to my sons. There's the story I wrote about why we dye Easter eggs (involving a clumsy bunny and a smorgasbord of juice) and my take on Greek mythology to explain where echos come from. I was a rhyming whiz and thought it wasn't real poetry if the lines didn't rhyme with a lilting cadence. To tell you the truth, I still prefer a Shel Silverstein verse to high falutin' poetry.
The one thing I miss most about my pre-child life is the vast amount of time I had to read read read. Now I spend my time nestled between my sons reading about cats in hats, a pigeon who wants to stay up late, and a llama in red pajamas. We've also branched out into chapter books. I'm a big fan of the Wimpy Kid series and try my best not to roll my eyes when reading anything about Jack and Annie from the Magic Tree House (my son's fave and admittedly informative, but too formulaic for me). I love reading to my sons and rue the day they curl up and read in a (well lit!) corner without me by their side. Already I'm weepy that we don't fit quite as well in what we dubbed the "comfy chair" that we've always sat in to read together. I blame that more on their bear-like appetites and growth spurts than my expanding girth.
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