Austin LOVES reading! That is often a very normal thing for toddlers. They want to read the same story over and over again and most parents make reading time part of the bedtime routine. We have really tried to foster a love of reading in Austin. From the very beginning, we have encouraged reading. I rocked in the nursery rocking chair and read stories to Austin before he was even born, and we haven't stopped reading since. We have tons of fun picking out books for Austin everywhere we go and have found great places to get get books for low prices. Books are special in our house and I think Austin has picked up on that. Most days, we read books with him for at least an hour a day, all throughout the day. Some days he will bring me one book after another after another to read to him and we can sit on the couch or in his rocking chair forever reading stories. We love to point out the pictures together and discuss things we read and see in the books along the way. We ask questions about what we're seeing and hearing and we even practice our counting and our colors by counting animals, naming the colors of the trains, etc. It is just so much fun to watch Austin get excited about reading!
We have been in the phase in which Austin wants to read the same story over and over and over and over and over, to the point where we actually had to put "farm book" away for a little bit before Steve and I went stark raving mad from reading it so many times. We also had a long time during which we would say part of a sentence or paragraph and he would fill in the rest. We were surprised at how much of the sentences he could fill in and the big complicated words he could say.
Now he's on to another phase, and it is quite adorable. He will choose a story for mommy to read and then when we're done, he takes the book and says "Now Austin read it." And he proceeds to "read" the story to me. It is so cute and really quite amazing to me to listen to him "read" these stories. He picks up so much while we read to him, and his vocabulary is expanding at exponential rates.
Yesterday, I read him "The Little Engine That Could," which has been one of his favorites for a long time. He then took the book and read it back to me. He used words like "indignantly" and "jolly" and "weary". He is great at saying "little blue engine" and, in fact, actually calls the book that. He often gets very excited when we get to the part where the engine says "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can" and he celebrates with the dolls and toys when the train reaches the top of the mountain. He remarkably can "read" me the book pretty well. I grabbed the video camera to catch him on tape. He was not as enthusiastic about doing it with Mommy behind the camera, but I caught him on tape reading some of it. He was more interested in seeing himself on the little screen of the camera. Since the last video he watched on there was when he was younger, he requests to "see the baby again" and tries to get behind the camera to look at the screen. My little cutie! I just treasure his adorable little personality and every precious moment I get to enjoy with him!
Here he is...
I realize that those of you not familiar with this story or his speech probably won't understand him completely, since the normal 2 year old has speech only about 50% understandable to a stranger, but he is actually saying the words from the story pretty correctly. He does go pretty fast at times - like the opening lines ("Chug, chug, chug, puff, puff, puff, ding dong, ding dong. The little train rumbled over the tracks..."). Check it out...
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