And suddenly, it clicked

Dowlan's shampooing the toothpaste out of the carpet, so I'm doing story time solo tonight. Because the noise is a bit much to go to sleep to, we keep reading book after book.

Charlie usually will either climb up and down the bunk, sit and play with Larry Boy or Eddie or, at the very most, sit in our lap while we read and either name things he sees or try to turn the pages faster. As the girls tend to pick the same book out two or three nights in a row before moving on, he'll usually latch on to one or two pictures in a book and only be excited when we're on those particular pages.

Tonight, we read one of my childhood favorites, Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb and, for the first time, he really wanted to see each page and, when we were done with it, went back through the pages and repeated the 'dum ditty, dum ditty, dum dum dum' as he pointed to the monkeys and the drums.

I read another book to the girls while he went over and over the monkey book. Then, I started reading Sandra Boynton's Belly Button Book and really connected the words and pictures together for the first time. He asked the names of the characters and tried to identify their emotions. We learned from Charlie that wearing green sunglasses means you are sad while visiting the Belly Button Beach. He noticed when Bee Bo (the tiny hippo) lost his toy and found his daddy.

After the third reading of the book, I left Charlie alone with his book and listened from a few feet away as he talked to Bee Bo and his Daddy about their buttons and sunglasses.I didn't have the heart to turn off the light--it was the first time it clicked with him why we sit him down every day, a few times a day, and every night and talk to him in sily voices while looking at pictures on cardboard.

Maybe Baby Dragon and Mama Dragon need to have a literacy day.