Like mother, like son

Worryingly I think N is showing even more traits like me than he was before.

He’s always enjoyed flicking through books and is getting more obsessed.  I’m not sure whether that’s like all toddlers, or whether he’s turning into a bookworm like me?

Firstly, he loves my books.  Whatever I’m reading he’ll find the book, flick through the pages and remove the bookmark.  I’m not sure whether he just likes being annoying, or whether he recognises that it was the one he made for mother’s day at nursery.  It’s probably just the ribbon bits out of the top of the book that’s so tempting.

He does have lots of books, most of them bought from nearly new sales or bargain book shops, and they’re currently in 3 rooms of the house.  A few in his toy buckets in the living room, lots in his bookcase/toy shelves in the dining room (come playroom at the moment) and then a box of them in his bedroom.

I used to keep the box in his bedroom on top of the wardrobe, and would just bring out a few books every so often for bedtime, but then he kept pointing to the box so it’s now on the floor and accessible to him whenever he wants.

All very well, but it means whenever we go upstairs for naps, bed, nappy change etc he roots around in the box and wants to sit on my lap and read them.  And when I say them, I mean them!  He doesn’t do whole stories on the whole, a few pages and that’s it time for the next book.

His current favourites:

Farm – great little picture & word book, with flaps that shows produce, animals, farm machinery and what all these things do/come from

Farm Animals – sparkle book.  He has 3 of this type of book (rhyming verse, or questions about Water Animals, Farm Animals and Animal Opposites), hand-me-downs from a friend but the farm animals one is his favourite.

Stories for One Year Olds – great short stories with animals as part of the stories.  He loves spotting the lion train driver (he roars when he sees it), and the monkey (see below)

Children’s first word & picture book – lots of words and pictures on themed pages.  Of course he likes the animal page the best, and this is how he’s learnt his animal sounds.  The most recent (apart from his lion roar) is the monkey – he now goes “ee ee” and does the underarm action for monkeys.  Very amusing and very cute.  We’re now working on ssss for the snake, and trumpeting with a trunk for the elephant.  I’m a tad concerned that he keeps pointing to the giraffe and panda, as I’m stumped on what sounds if any they make!

I’m really glad he loves books, but it’s now getting a bit drastic.  This evening, he just kept pointing to the book box even once he was in his cot for bed.  So he went to bed with his Red Racing car book.  Hopefully he’ll remember to throw it out the cot sides before actually falling asleep.