Let Me Tell You A Little Story, Again.

As previously mentioned, Tegan is constantly changing. What she wanted for dinner last week now gets pitched to the floor, playing with the shoes in the closet is boring, and even Samson seems to be getting the cold shoulder as of late. Everything seems to come and go in Tegan's world except for her love of raspberries (which we'll get to another time) and books.

The kid loves books. She will spend half an hour flipping the pages back and forth, obsessively trying to master the thin pages (without ripping them to shit). For the most  part, I love that Tegan loves books. One very compelling reason is that it comes in very handy when she is having a meltdown. Let me be clear, when these tantrums occur I would rather be a half drunk call girl stuck in a room with Patrick Bateman than try to calm her down with any traditional methods.  A book is the only thing to tame this one.

While her love for books never fades, her acceptance of new books is with much reluctance. She has her favorites and that's that. We go to the library every week where I grab the ten board books look the least likely to be carrying the plague, and we go home and give them all a test run.  On a good week, I'm lucky if I can get two.

This basically means that I am stuck reading the same books over and over and over. I shouldn't call it reading because at this point I don't even need to look at the pages. If you think watching the same kids shows over and over again is the most suicide inducing aspect of parenting, let me tell you, reading about a car going beep beep over and over is equally annoying.

Honestly, I'm pretty thrilled she loves books so much. It's better than loving TV or Barnie or methamphetamine. Hey, and maybe this will stick around, and she'll actually complete her reading assignments in school (unlike her mother who despised reading until she found out not all writing was done by old, boring white men) and maybe become a writer...a really famous talented one and write the next great masterpiece like War and Peace, or Catcher in The Rye...or Twilight!

Okay, okay, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Although, this whole fantasy of how Tegan will support me in old age is a much better (and less psychologically damaging) pipe dream than say, pageanting. For now I'll settle for reading the same five books over and over again, and attempting to broaden her literary horizons. The Truth is, if she's happy to listen, I'm happy to read...again.

(book worm/future NY Times best selling author)