Books of The Week

Atticus loves to have books read to him, but recently has also started reading to himself. Let me explain. When we moved him to his big boy bed, we started reading to him while he was in his bed. In fact, we eventually had to put a kitchen timer in his room so he knew that when the timer went off, we were done reading. If we let Atticus pick when to stop reading, we'd read for hours. So, books in bed was becoming the norm. We did, however, physically remove them from the bed before tucking him in.

Then, we went through our no sleeping phase. While getting over that, I would always tell him that when he woke up, he could play with his toys or read in his room and when he was ready for me to come get him, he just had to call for me. And that worked great! He would grab those books and "read" through them until he was ready for me to come get him. Well, we are now to the point that he reads books in his bed for at least 30 minutes in the morning, if not longer. And even after we put him to bed and turn the lights out, he pulls them out and reads for awhile (he has a pretty good night light) until he is just too sleepy and falls asleep. So, he MUST have his books in his bed when he goes to sleep at night. It just causes an argument if we try to take them away when we tuck him in. And, really, how can we refuse him reading books?

So, Vic counted the other night, and Atticus has accumulated 22 books in his bed. IN HIS BED. You find them under the covers too. And if you try to put them away while he is looking, he is certain he NEEDS them. However, we know the ones he reads OVER and OVER. The others are just for comfort, I think. So, I intend to secretly re-shelve some of the comfort books today. Now that you've heard that entire lengthy story, I want to put a picture up of some of the books read consistently for this week. It is funny how they change from week to week or how some books stay on the reading list for weeks at a time. This week, we seem to be stuck on:

1. The Lion King Find and Fit Book: While not really the story of the lion king, it has cardboard pieces that you take from the top and put in the book. He loves to do this over and over. However, each morning, we have to find all 8 pieces in his bed; Vic thinks we need to buy a backup book because one morning we will have lost one for good.

2. Elmo and Friends: This book was one we got in an auction basket about a year and a half ago. Atticus has never cared about Sesame Street or this book, until a couple weeks ago. He says "Elmo" and "Osta Douch" (Oscar the Grouch) and loves to look through it.

3. Let's Go To The Zoo: This is one of the Little People books and has flaps with animals all through it. You know how we love animals! Someone recently gave him the Little People book for the farm and on the back, it has tiny pictures of other Little People books. We were getting to the point of going straight to the back on the book to see those tiny pictures instead of reading the farm book. So, I decided to invest. Good investment!

4. Bob & Larry's ABCS's: Atticus just got this book this past week from GG. It's the Veggie Tales characters and we have been reading it a lot.

I'm so glad he loves books and there is nothing cuter than looking on the video monitor to see him flipping through his books each evening and morning.