story time

In the last week or so, Bear has become so, so much more engaged with the world -- and one of the most fun changes is that now he *loves* story time. We've been reading to him since he was born, but for the first two months, it sort of felt like we were reading picture books into a vacuum -- he didn't really respond to them or engage in any way while we did it.

Then, suddenly, it was different. He loves the words, he loves the pictures, he sits there and grins at us when we read about hippos and bunnies and (of course) Baby Bear.

A few weeks ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended reading out loud to kids starting at birth, as a way to encourage the development of critical language skills in infancy. My parents were wonderful about reading to me as a kid, and I don't think I'd have such a love for reading and writing as an adult if they hadn't (I might not even have this blog)! So we're going to do our best to give Bear the same foundation -- and, as a bonus, as you can see from the photo above, story time tends to be pretty wonderful.

As a side note, when we read the AAP article, Chad's reaction was: "Great, we've already been reading to him." Mine was: "But, wait, I think there was a day when we didn't read to him once. I didn't read to him in the hospital. WE HAVE MISSED AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE OUR BABY CRITICAL LANGUAGE SKILLS AND OMG THIS IS THE WORST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED EVER."

Gah. Still working on coping with my perfectionist tendencies!