Avid Reader

Asher has liked being read to for most of his year-long life, but over the past couple of weeks I've noticed that he's taken more of an interest in "reading" to himself. It used to be, he'd grab a book and toddle over to us, grunting and waving the book, as if to say, "READ TO ME, BITCHES!" More and more, I'm finding him quietly occupying himself, often times with a book.

His favorite books are those by Sandra Boynton, which we started collecting after several hand-me-downs were given to us by Cousin Ella and we discovered how cute and fun to read they are. He also enjoys his Sesame Street "Sesame Beginnings" line of books, Disney Babies books (much to our chagrin, as they are pretty weak and lame), and Muppet Babies books. We had bought him several books in a series by Olivier Dunrea for his birthday because we thought they were adorable, but for some reason he can't seem to stand them. After about two pages, he pushes the book away, starts whining, and rushes over to pick out a new book. Go figure. He is also really getting into "flap-books." So far, he's been really gentle with the couple he has, so we just bought him a set of Elmo flap-books for his Easter basket. (Shh, don't tell him.)

Asher is a man with a variety of tastes, though, and lately doesn't seem fully satisfied by those baby books. He occasionally likes us to read to him from the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader books or Reader's Digest when we're conducting business in the bathroom. Then there are times we find him pulling books out of the bookcase and perusing them on his own. In the below picture, he was caught looking at one of his favorite books, Sinatra 101. I guess what surprises me the most about this is that he seems to be entertained by the words, as these books really don't have any pictures to look at. Why am I surprised, though? This is the boy who watches Hogan's Heroes with Daddy and the military channel with Grandfather with almost as much excitement as Yo Gabba Gabba.