For the love of reading

Nitch's favorite thing to do right now (other than playing soccer with his dad) is reading stories. The same four stories....over...and over...and over again. I don't mind though because I'm just so excited that he likes reading as much as I do! In all honesty, I'm not sure if he likes reading or if he just knows that the best way to get my undivided attention is by bringing me a book and asking to sit in my lap (how could anyone refuse that!).
This is his favorite place to play right now---the bookshelf in his room where I keep all the children's books (well, all the books that I don't mind getting beat up. They're all the "okay, but not great" books that Missy graciously donated to me before I left Utah :) Thanks Missy!) He likes to pull them all off the shelf and sit and turn (or should I say maul) the pages. He especially likes taking the dust jackets off of the books that have them.

I've tried to read him stories since he was old enough to hold his head upright, which was pretty early on for him, but he could never sit through a whole story...except one. The Very Hungry Caterpiller by Eric Carle. A great book, but never one of my favorites. When I read him that book he sits absolutely still through the whole thing. Now that he's older, he STILL loves it, but he helps me turn the pages. I had to hide it for a while because I was so sick of reading it. The other day he carried it up to me while I was cleaning the kitchen and pulled at my pant leg. We went to the glider, cuddled up and read it together, and when I closed the cover and said "The End" he promptly turned the book around, pointed at the cover and went, "Uh, Uh, Uh."
"Again?" I asked.
"Uh, Uh, Uh...." pointing to the cover, trying to open it back up.
So I read it again. And then again. And then again....SIX TIMES! He would have had me read it five more times, but I stopped because I was getting grumpy.

He also likes to read Pat the Bunny, Goodnight Moon, Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy by Susan Boynton, Quick as a Cricket by Don and Audrey Wood (which we borrowed from the library and had to give back recently....that was another one that he would ask to read several times in succession), and more recently Runaway Bunny....but he can only sit through about half of that. He also does a little book jig that looks something like this....

Just kidding, he's falling as he tries to get out of this...