Thursdays with Wild Child

Thursday is one of the days of the week when I have Wild Child home with me, alone. Middle Child goes to preschool from 9 till 1 and it’s just me and the “baby.”

I like these days.

He plays “different” when it’s just him. He also seeks out my attention a lot more.

Very few of these days go by when he doesn’t ask me to read to him. Reading to your children is one of those things that I just take for granted. Some of my earliest memories are of being read to and it’s often the only time when my kids will sit still. (In fact, most of the time they don’t make it all the way through a book without trying to bounce on my head, at least once.) I don’t really push reading. I suggest it sometimes but I think it needs to come from the child- I’m afraid that too much, “Sit still, while I read to you,” becomes “Books are Evil!” in the minds of some kids.   Most kids love to be read to (in fact, I read chapter books to Oldest Child way past the time when he could read them to himself and he requested that I read to him into his early teens) and I’m always surprised when those “read to your children” commercials come on Tv. People have to be told to do this? Well, yeah. Sometimes (often), I have to remind myself to slow down and enjoy it.

Anyway, so when Wild Child said, “Read caterpillar book,” I was not surprised and sorta excited. He picked out three books to read:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

He organized them very carefully on the coffee table and climbed up onto "the blue couch," next to me.

“I sit your lap.”
“Put de blanket on me.”

We got cozy.

And, I opened the first book. No matter how many times I’ve read these, no matter how old I get, it’s still like going on a journey.

We have a rhythm and a tradition to The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in fact, some times he just asks me to only read certain pages.

He likes it when I count, "...he ate through 1,2,3 plums..."

I love it when he "reads" these pages to me, "...one swice of sawami..."

It always surprises me
when he remembers the whole thing.

Wild Child's still working out exactly what happens to the caterpillar in the end. He just can't grasp that he becomes the butterfly...and is that a good thing?

I opened The Snowy Day, thankful that we've had so many "snow days" this year and that Wild Child finally has a reference for this book. :)

The Snowy Day was one of my absolute favorites when I was a little girl. Right from when my mom would say,  "The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats," and then turn the page and read the dedication, it was like poetry all the way through.

The colors and the textures! Oh, I loved this book.
The first sneak peek into the mind of the little girl who'd grow up to love poetry and art - here it is!

I remember being fascinated by the snow. Snow was supposed to be white. But, here it's all sorts of colors!

Wild Child loves it when he picks up the stick and makes tracks and when the snow Plops! on his head.

I always thought what a sweet momma she was.
I wanted her to hug me.

I LOVED this pink tub
and to this day I can still feel the moist warm steam
that I was sure surrounded him.

Wild Child says, "Uh! It melted! Awwwww!"

I don't remember really liking Where the Wild Things Are, as a little girl. I'm not sure if that's 'cause I was a little girl and so nobody really read it to me, or I didn't "get" it or if, maybe, it scared me just a little but now when I open it I'm always bum-rushed with emotions.

I'm imagining my husband as he sat on his mother's lap when he was a little boy and she read him his very most favorite book. I'm remembering Oldest Child, sitting on my lap with erasers on all his little fingers, like claws and I'm giggling at Middle Child and Wild Child as they ROAR with the characters.

As soon as we close the book, Wild Child is up and off. "We make Wild Thing puzzle!" Um, okay. Hang on, I'm coming too!

Yeah, books. Boring black words on plain white pages...and so much more.