Illiterate little baby

It's true, my son is illiterate. He can't read a lick. Oh the shame.

Oh right, he's 18 months. Chill out, me.

Honestly though, I had started to think the little biscuit never would sit still long enough to let us read to him. Before he was born, I had this vision of a docile little cherub that would sit still and pay me his undivided attention while together we flipped through the pages of colorful and zany children's books, telling tales both sensical and non. I would act out the stories using different voices for every character, be they dog, cat, zebra, friendly elf, or unicorn. The air would be filled with our shared joy of reading. It would be fucking heartwarming.

The reality was that he was having none of it. From day one, he didn't want to sit still, he didn't want to pay attention, and he didn't give a damn if I could make the zebra sound just like Meatwad or if the cat sounded like Cartman with a French accent. If the book caught his interest, it was because it looked like something fun to destroy. We quickly put away all the paper books for later, leaving out only board books which he was only interested in as items that could be used to bang against furniture. Or throw.

In the past few months though, we've had quite the reversal. Not only will he sit still and pay attention while storytime is in progress, he'll actually pick up the book of his choice and bring it over to me, asking, nay, demanding that I sit him in my lap and read it to him.

There's a catch, however. You're not just gonna read him the book. You're gonna read it again. And then when you're done, you're gonna read it again. And when you're done with that, you might offer up another book, one that perhaps he liked just fine yesterday, but this book will be rejected in favor of the one you just read, which you will then proceed to read. In short, you will read the same book no less than five times straight through. I think our record may be ten, though I never keep count. When you're done with that, then you may move on to another book.

It's cool though, particularly since with school, this is about the only pleasure reading I do these days. And as interesting as my readings for class may be, a text book is still a text book. Gotta have a good dose of farting dogs here and there.