No more books!

Andrew loves to read. And all the "experts" say that reading to a child is so good for their vocabulary, future reading skills, blah blah blah. So yea me...Andrew loves to read and I read to him a lot. And we go to the library a lot.

But that is all over.

No more books at our house. They are a bad influence.

A few weeks ago, Andrew and I checked out "DW the Picky Eater" or something like that. Arthur is a beloved child's literary character, and DW is his younger sister. Andrew is a picky eater...therefore I thought this would be a great book for us to read.

Now, we get 10 library books out a week for Andrew. We probably read each one twice a day. That is 20 repetitions of each and every book. (and that is why we go to the library every week...no sane person could read a child's book more than that).

Our DW book had one sentence that seemed to resonate with each repetition...DW says "I hate spinach". Guess what Andrew started saying? It started with Andrew saying spinach over and over (he says "binage"). We were driving to the grocery one day and Andrew said "buh buh binage. Binage starts with B". I tried my hardest to tell him that it is actually an "S" word, but he would hear none of it. Then it evolved into "I hate spinach" which evolved into "I hate spaghetti" which evolved into "I hate Mommy". Lovely. After a few weeks of telling him that it's not nice to hate a person because it hurts their feelings, we now have "I hate anybody" which means I hate nobody. I hope that's what it means.

This week's batch of books has a seemingly innocent picture book called "No More Cookies". A little girl eats too many cookies, so Mommy says no more cookies, and the girl and her stuffed monkey try lots of cute antics to get a cookie. Cute. Andrew loves it. But after the Mommy foils each attempt, the little girl exclaims that it isn't fair! She just wants one more cookie!

So guess what Andrew has been saying the last couple of days? "It's not fair". Lovely.

No more books! I should have at least until pre-school starts until he starts picking up phrases like "I hate..." and "It's not fair". This is NOT the vocabulary I wanted him to learn!


***readers should note that we are going to the library Tuesday...so don't be alarmed that Andrew will be deprived of more quality children's literature like those mentioned above. Although I am distressed at the prospect of what new phrases will come from next week's books, it is more distressing to think of a week without new books where I have to read our own books for the 1,000th time.***