Turn the Page!

I know, I know all kids do this. They pick a book that they love and they make you read it over and over and over and over and over again. And then you bury it in the back yard, put the play structure on top of it, maybe move to a new town and they still find it, pull it out from beneath the soil and make you read it again. But I feel like my son has taken this to extremes.

We bought this gigantic book at Costco a few months ago, which at the time, he seemed to hate. This ticked me off because it was $8 and it was meant to amuse him while we shopped, which it did not. I felt we had to buy it anyway because it has those little doors that you peek-a-boo with and he'd opened them and sort of bent them and I didn't think we could leave a "used" book behind. It was kind of like taking it to the bathroom with us. Stupid $8 book!

Fast forward to a month later and the gigundous book that's too over sized to fit anywhere is his favorite thing on the planet. If I were kidnapped by martians in the middle of the night, he'd be cool with it, so long as they left his book behind. I should be happy he likes to read, right? I should be loving the fact that instead of wanting to smack me, pull my hair or bite me, he wants to sit on my lap for long stretches, and I do mean loooooong stretches of time and read, right?

The thing is, we're reading the same book, every day...all day. And most of the time, we're reading the same page. God forbid we move on from the first page. No way, Jose! We NEED to talk about that garbage truck until we've talked ourselves blue in the face. And, don't forget that we've got to eat our fill of pretend ice cream, enough to make you pretend vomit! Yep, and there's got to be plenty of pretend petting the kitty too! So much pretending to do on one page! And then....we do it all AGAIN!

My favorite is when he makes me point at all the pictures for him. He actually takes my finger in his little fist and drags it around the page, making grunting noises: "eh? eh?" As if pointing himself is just too taxing for the hundred-thousandth time today.

I know that when he's fifteen I may have to restrain myself from dragging him and his algebra book onto my lap and asking him to point at the quadratic equation with me, but for now, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I'm pretty sick of THIS book. I'm all for reading and snuggling, but maybe another book, even one about trucks would be okay by me.

I like when other people visit and he cons them into doing the reading.... :)