Reading Mommy Style

Nothing is better than snuggling up with all three of them around me and reading to them. It makes me feel like no matter what else happens during the day, we will always end on a calm note. Frances broke the refrigerator shelf trying to eat a stick of butter. Kenneth jumped off the couch playing Tarzan with a jump rope. Lowell tried to eat a Barbie doll leg. But when they beg me to read “In the Night Kitchen,” it is all worth it. When we follow it up with “Where the Wild Things Are,” I know that I am one of many moms who will always have Maurice Sendak to thank for the bedtime routine and heaven for about five minutes. You all know a loop hole is coming. A big one, right now.

Reading to the three of them is literally a three ring circus. It takes a good fifteen minutes to decide what we are going to read, and another five on which book is first. Frances wants letter books. She loves letter books. She could care less about stories where a paper bag princess realizes she is engaged to a bum and dances off in the sunset. We have two sets of books about letters and she has them memorized. She can recognize some site words, and if I make a mistake or forget something, she can correct me. She is also obsessed with nursery rhymes. When I say nursery rhymes, I mean all nursery rhymes and their various versions and the alternate endings and the verses no one else knows. For example, after he fell, Jack went home to mend his head with vinegar and brown paper. We could go on who wants to be a millionaire nursery rhyme edition and walk away without using a lifeline. She likes repetition, visuals, and a routine in her story time.

Kenneth needs real stories, preferably with some action. He also feels the need to ask a million questions during a reading. For example, he was very skeptical about Little Red Riding Hood. I put some of it in a status once, but here is the dialogue that took place:
“Mom, that is not a Grandma. That is a wolf.”
“He is wearing a disguise.”
“It isn’t a good disguise. I can see that it is a wolf.”
“Kenneth it’s a story.”
“OK, keep going.”
“Grandma, what big eyes you have.”
“And then he eats her.”
“No, Kenneth, then the wolf says, All the better to see you with my dear.”
“Why would he say anything? He is a wolf, he should just eat her.”
And so it went mixing what he knows from Animal Planet with what I am trying to read to him from fairy tales.

Lowell is still in the “board books are good for your gums” mode. That is fine. He loves to just be in the room and laugh. The other two love reading to him and making sure he gets it. That is fun to watch.

Children’s books have come a long way since Curious George. Some of their favorites I don’t think my grandmother could have read to them, I can’t see G.G. reading “Walter the Farting Dog” or “Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales.” I am not kidding when I think she rolls over in her grave at least twice a week by what goes on around here.


When they get on a topic, they want to check every book they can find out of the library on the subject. Right now, it’s Venus Flytraps. We have all of the library books just on this carnivorous plant, and we have read them. They both sit still to learn about how this little plant eats bugs. We have also watched several Youtube videos of this plant eating spiders, flies, and once it tried to eat a frog. They both seem to understand that they are too big for a Venus Flytrap to eat, thank goodness. The cool thing about this is that I learn something new. I took one science course in college, and now I get to go back and learn more. For example, the Flytrap needs nitrates from the insect’s body because it grows in bog soil. Each leaf set can eat three bugs, and then the leaves turn black and fall off.


When Kenneth found out they grow in NC, he said, “Mama! That’s where I was born.” (I wanted to say, no kidding, but I didn’t.) He is mad we moved because he used to live where the Flytraps grow. Now I can add “Has Venus Flytraps” to my list of pros for the south, of course here lately the bogs are being drained for pig farms.

I have tried very hard to indoctrinate “books” into them. They each have a shelf in their room of books. They have books in the playroom and books in the bathroom. They get books for their birthdays, Christmas, and in their Easter Basket. We go to the library once a week just like all the other good mommies. I could write yet another novel on library behavior, but I will just share this one story. Once during story time, the hippy librarians, not to be confused with the little old lady librarians, were doing a felt board of “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.” I loved that song as a kid! No one told me that now she cries instead of dies, oops. But I mean really, that is up there with Grandma being confused with a wolf. How is she going to eat all that and live?

I remember when I was pregnant with Frances; I made a list of all my favorite books that I was going to read to her as she got bigger. Yes, I read to my stomach-Harry Potter, big surprise. I did not have the luxury of reading to the other two in the womb, but maybe they were listening when I read to their siblings. I love it that they love some of the ones I used to love. Right now they are in to “Pinkalicious,” Dr. Seuss’s “Hop on Pop,” and the letter “I.” It changes from week to week.

I wonder if I wouldn’t read to my kids if it weren’t for all those actors in the commercials on television telling me to read to my kids. It must be because the cast of Will and Grace shamed me into it most definitely. Once Frances had her Bible story book out, and I really felt like Miss Wonderful Supermom when I thought she was looking at that, until I heard her flip to pictures of David the Shepherd and she started singing, “Baa Baa Black sheep…” oh crap. There goes my grandmother again.