Reading Often And Early

Ian is a boy who loves his stories, and not just in terms of variety, but also quantity, frequency, and even regularity. It seems that no matter what time he went to bed, there's a good chance he will wake me up around 7:15 in the morning, any day of the week, with one or more books in his hand and say something like "Read," or "Story." This is my queue to come downstairs to the designated spot - the livingroom couch - and read to him. Eventually Daniel usually follows, either creeping down the stairs slealthily or whining-bordering-on-crying, but I also make him join us on the couch - me in the middle and one boy on each side, and we continue reading. Daniel sometimes "lurks" on the stairs, stealthily looking through the bars of the bannister, either as if mischeviously spying on us with a grin or feeling insufficiently attended-to, with an official Morning Grouchy Face. That's my queue to beg him to join us, in sweet, highly tonal falsetto; of course he obliges. Often Madeleine joins the pack at some point, quite pleased to be one of the crowd.

My designated spot is in the middle of the couch, with a boy in pajamas on either side of me. When Madeleine joins us, she sits at an angle, kind of between me and Daniel, with Daniel complaining that she's taking his spot. I'm pretty sure that Ian insists on sitting to my left - that's his traditional prerogative, it seems, so Daniel and Madeleine get the right by default. I used to try to sit at one end of the couch, to lean against the arm-rest, but it quickly became evident that that positioning neglected the rule of even distribution of Daddy across all story-listeners.

Now that we read "real" books with minimal illustrations, such as "Mrs. Pigglewiggle" and "Tales of Little Pear", he takes the process of bookmarking very seriously. He maintains a strip of paper towel for the occasion, and solemnly places it across the designated page as we complete our chapter. One pretty hilarious thing is the way that Madelein tunes in, even though much of the time, the stories are so comples and picture-minimalist that it's hard to believe she could comprehend more than an occasional word. Daniel preferes picturey-books, and sometimes looks through them as I read Ian his more six-year-old-appropriate texty-books, but somehow he still needs to be part of the action. When there's time, I try to give Daniel his quota of "Blueberries for Sal" after "Sammy the Skunk" has been duly given his share of attention. If I ask the boys to settle on a single work, Daniel almost alwasy acquiesces to Ian's more sophisticated taste.

(November, 2009)