The world unfurling

Maybe I'll get a reader yet! I didn't like reading as a child. I remember my parents reading to me and dad doing voices, but to read on my own was not an exciting idea, until I reached middle school. By highschool, my parents were telling me I couldn't bring a novel to the dinner table and I studied litterature in college, so I guess I was a late reading bloomer. Due to this progression, I have not been overly concerned about Ivan's disinterest in books- well I should say in reading. He's actually very interested in books. He's interested in chewing on them, flipping the pages, throwing them on the floor to see them bounce, pulling them off bookshelves... but not interested in spending more than 1/2 second on a page. I had read while pregnant that if you read the same book out loud everyday, it will be the baby's favorite book after birth. Apparently this is true. I've been reading "God created me too" since pregnancy and almost every night since. Recently, Ivan has started to pull it out at bedtime and even other books, but I have to shorten them. Instead of talking about the stars, trees, fish, wildlife and oceans... "God created me too" has now become a spot the dog or cat book. Ironically, there is one of these on about each page, so we open it and Ivan says- daw, may, daw, daw, may, fh ("fh" is for the one page with fish, a high pitched "may" means cat), then closes it. Then on to the next book, about all the different animals saying goodnight. This one is read even faster, Ivan flips through all the pages until he finds the dogs and says- daw. He'll flip a few more pages, get disinterested, go back to the dog and repeat- daw.

However, today, he surprised me. He has been becoming more and more attentive at toddler reading time at the library. I think not bringing the diaper bags helped. He listened the whole time and even ventured to do a couple of the actions, but not near as many as he does at home. I think he's a bit shy about all the people or maybe with such a structured agenda.

He went wild at the park the other day. A couple of days ago, we were with older kids and he noticed how they could climb on everything. So when I took him and Myka by myself yesterday, he figured he should do it all himself, even though the bars were taller than him, he wanted to climb them. It was a weird balancing act in many ways. Emotionally and verbally, I was urging him to try new challenges, climb through and over and on, but then it was YIKES, can he do that? Physically, I had to grab Myka and chase down Ivan before he hurt himself. At my most scarriest and proudest moment, I had to maneover around the entire playground to get to the end of a tunnel and help him out, only when I got there, he'd already turned back. By the time I located him, all I saw was the top of his body going down the tallest slide he's been on yet. He managed to get down on his own! This was most excellent, because only moments before, when I was beside him, he tripped at the top of a slide and I had to catch him as he face planted into the slide's side. Another moment of tears was when he tried to walk off a two foot high step. Other moments of terror included the myriad times he would walk off either toward a hill (which descended to a small stream) or to the parking lot. I had always assumed that kids wanted to be within sight of their parent. May it be known, I was wrong and it takes less time than reading our two word pages to loose him in a library or other crazy place we think it would be fun to take our child. I had always thought the park was so cool, but when I took Ivan the other day, all I could think of was how incredibly HUGE it was. It was as if someone had increased it's dimensions 100 times! And with each step, each new slide, each bit of learning, or new book, it becomes smaller, more understandable and attainable, but not any less of an adventure.