Book, thy name is love.

I have a confession. I LOVE books. I honestly don't believe you can have enough books. Nor read enough. And I have a hard time saying no to books. I do come by this honestly though. We had to enroll Grandma Dee in a twelve step program because of her love of books... and bookstores. (just kidding... but we did have to steer her away from them many a time as our house and her office overfloweth... you know it mom!) Well, it seems we have breed little book lovers as well.

no, this isn't a real photo from one of our houses

I've known Ethan had the book obsession when he was very young and spent tons of time in front of his bookcase looking through his books, pouring over books in the family room, always sat intently to listen to books and knew the names of his billion books before he was two years old. By the time he was six months old (no kidding), he wanted say in which handful of books we read each night. Not that he didn't like some, more that he knew what he was in the mood for apparently and he made it very clear. He picked them out. His daycare teachers back then always told me he was the only child in the infant room that would sit still and listen and then want more. Same in the toddler room, and toddlers don't sit still for much at daycare or anywhere.  Maybe the best example of his love of books came when we were potty training him.  Our 'potty prize bag' had books in it.  Lots of them.  That Ethan would droll over... like most addicts... he HAD to have them.  So, my little two year old son realized that he could eek out teeny tiny little poos and get a book, read it, then eek out another teeny tiny little poo and get another book and so on.  Yes, he got us on a technicality.  Now if that doesn't spell book addict, I am not sure what does.

Both twins love books, but Oliver seems more so than Collin. Though they both sit and listen whenever you read, they love books. Of the few words that Collin can actually say, 'book' is one of them. With the K sound and all. Now that is love. And if Oliver is not playing 'mini me' to Ethan, you can bet he is sitting with a pile of books around him. And you know what? I secretly (okay, not so secretly now) think that is wonderful!

Ethan's latest thing is chapter books. All chapter books. Tons of chapter books. It started with one he got as a gift late summer, which honestly I thought he was too young for yet (it was a 2nd grade book). After all, I'm not talking about books that have pictures. I was wrong. Very wrong. He got very excited after we read a chapter and wondered all day about what would happen the next day when we read a few more chapters. He would talk about it when I got home and tell me how excited he was to read more. He would page ahead to look at the few small sketched pictures (usually one for every four or five pages) and try to figure it out. He is intently interested in the story line - what's to come next, recanting what happened, predicting the next chapter, recalling other books in the series that we've read and how they related to this particular story, etc. He begs me to read 'just one more chapter' (and sometimes I do because I am interested too!). We plow through each of these long books in a few days and when we are done, he has already decided in his head which is next as he pours over all of them constantly. Fortunately, Scholastic book order forms just started up again this fall at his pre-school, because we are coming to the end of his recent haul from birthday and Christmas. So, guess who is back looking through book order forms? Because, it's true, he's got the book bug too. He loves to hold them, smell them, look through them, study them and read them over and over.

Ahhh, books. What a great thing.