Reading

I will admit that I've never been a huge reader.  I just don't like to read.  At all.  So, this has always been hard for me as a parent to involve reading into a daily routine for my kids.  As I've said before, since Ryan was born we kind of went on a reading hiatus.  In the recent months, I started to bring it back for Tyler and introduce it for Ryan. 

From very early on Tyler's favorite book was Brown Bear, Brown Bear.  I have painful joyous memories of reading this book daily and many times more than once a day.  Not intentionally (but kind of), I pushed that book to the side when introducing books to Ryan.  He has gravitated to the classic, Goodnight Moon and just as Tyler's favorite, I can recite this book by memory.  Luckily since it's short, I can manage to take less than five minutes each night and sit down with Ryan in my lap and read the book.  However, at this age it's more like reading while quickly flipping the pages because for whatever reason my kids have always wanted to flip the pages in the wrong direction.  We barely make it to the end before Ryan is jumping out of my arms to go run away.

But he likes it.

I pulled the plug on Tyler's latest reading series, Captain Underpants.  Yes, I know I wrote a long post raving about it, but it turns out that I don't like hearing "poopy butt" all of the time.  Go figure.

We are going to try a new series as soon as I can find one that meets Tyler's criteria of "really, really funny."

As far as my reading?  Well, I'm here to say that I read a book once a year.  Yes, that's right folks.  Once a year.  And that book is read on an airplane when I travel for work.  In the past it has been one of the Twilight books.  Most recently on my trip to Chicago it was Bringing up Boys by James Dobson.  I bought this book months ago and started reading it, but my main problem with reading is that I fall asleep.  It doesn't matter how great the plot is, I'm usually out within 20 minutes.  Anyway, I enjoyed parts of the book.  It really gave me a good understanding about how to raise Tyler and Ryan with regards to disciplining, the relationship between sons and fathers, the importance of a father being in the house, and how boys are at a disadvantage in schools.  What didn't appeal too much to me was the emphasis that mothers should opt to stay at home if possible.  But I will not dwell on that here! 

Hopefully, I will raise readers.  They have a 50/50 shot since Josh does enjoy reading.  I just cannot get into it!  My eyes naturally start blurring the words as if to say "go to sleep!"