Read It! Read It!
Stella loves books. She drags then all around the house, back and forth between her bedroom and the living room, asks to have them in her crib when she sleeps, and even has designated bath books. Every day, she approaches her Father or I with a book in one hand, big pleading eyes, and says, "Read it. Read it." Then shakes her head in a vehement yes, as if she is willing the only acceptable response. She often makes her request when I am typing away at my desk, trying to work, and she is on tip toe, peering over the top of my desk top. I feel bad that at least half of the time, I have to deny her, and tell her to ask her Daddy or read it to herself. For the most part she is fine with this, and never whines too long. Our new problem stems not from her constant desire to read and share her books with us, but from her recent obsession with her absolutely favorite book.
Since Stella was little, and just beginning to crawl and use furniture to pull herself up, her favorite place to do so was at a book shelf full of travel guides, cookbooks and Gourmet magazines. She could spend hours entertaining herself by pulling all the books off the shelves, and flipping through the usually picture-less pages. This was a great clean-up game on our part, as you can imagine. As she grew, and got bored with black and white pages, we thought that she might have finally lost interest in our bookcase, but her break was short lived. When you live in a dinky, closet-size home, one is bound to return to the same haunts. Eventually, Stella found the book of her dreams, a cookbook from the early 90's, entitled "The Surreal Gourmet - Real Food for Pretend Chefs."
This book is full of surrealist food images, like eggplants in a nest, an avocado guitar, and a Mr. Potato Head spud. However, what really seems to rock Stella's world, are all the images of fish, like goldfish with a martini glass or a paintbrush tail, fish bones, and a fish shaped grill. She is constantly forcing this book upon us with shouts of, "Fish! Fish!". After initially finding her fascination with this book humorous, we now find it exacerbating. There is nothing for us to "read", and all Stella wants to do is scream "FISH!" at the appropriate pages. Dan and I have now grown to hate this book, and we keep putting it away, thinking that she will forget about it. Stella is not stupid, and this hasn't worked, so now we have become truly mean parents and have hid it.
Yes, that is right. Cue the evil Dracula laughter - "Mmwahahahaaahhhh!!!!"
Since Stella was little, and just beginning to crawl and use furniture to pull herself up, her favorite place to do so was at a book shelf full of travel guides, cookbooks and Gourmet magazines. She could spend hours entertaining herself by pulling all the books off the shelves, and flipping through the usually picture-less pages. This was a great clean-up game on our part, as you can imagine. As she grew, and got bored with black and white pages, we thought that she might have finally lost interest in our bookcase, but her break was short lived. When you live in a dinky, closet-size home, one is bound to return to the same haunts. Eventually, Stella found the book of her dreams, a cookbook from the early 90's, entitled "The Surreal Gourmet - Real Food for Pretend Chefs."
This book is full of surrealist food images, like eggplants in a nest, an avocado guitar, and a Mr. Potato Head spud. However, what really seems to rock Stella's world, are all the images of fish, like goldfish with a martini glass or a paintbrush tail, fish bones, and a fish shaped grill. She is constantly forcing this book upon us with shouts of, "Fish! Fish!". After initially finding her fascination with this book humorous, we now find it exacerbating. There is nothing for us to "read", and all Stella wants to do is scream "FISH!" at the appropriate pages. Dan and I have now grown to hate this book, and we keep putting it away, thinking that she will forget about it. Stella is not stupid, and this hasn't worked, so now we have become truly mean parents and have hid it.
Yes, that is right. Cue the evil Dracula laughter - "Mmwahahahaaahhhh!!!!"
posted by mrsgreen at 11:46 AM
2 Comments:
How about books on tape or the leapfrog. My kids love their leap frog. It will read their books to them and it is interactive. Takoda started at about a year old and didn't care or really know the difference to the AAAnt wrong buzz thing vs. the ding ding ding right buzz. You can feel less guilty since it is a learning toy and not just an electronic babysitter.
When I read the last line of this post it made me laugh, but then it got me thinking. If it was not for the fact that the three of you travel so much, I'd say that you should buy her a goldfish. It is a low maintenance pet and I bet she would love watching it swim around.
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