July 29, 2004

Bed time stories

Last night, I was once again put firmly in my place by the girl child.

She joined us downstairs for a snack after putting on her pj's. Actually, what she called a snack was almost as much as my wife ate for her entire dinner. I don't know where this child puts it. She is so thin that the doctor actually had her tested to see if she was absorbing nutrients. She was. She is in the 90th percentile for her age group for height and the 50th for weight. Tall and thin. I don't have any idea where that comes from. After finishing her "snack", we adjourned to the living room to watch the Yankees/Blue Jays game on mute while we had our story.

She picked two books, one in Norwegian for my wife to read and one in English for me. Mine was "Katy No Pockets", a story about a kangaroo who lacks a pocket in which she can carry her baby. I get tired of reading the same old story all the time, so, I do what any normal father does. I change the words. In Curious George, for example, the Man with the Yellow Hat becomes the Man with the Green Hat. Katy was not searching for a pocket this time, but a backpack. My daughter is way too smart for this kind of thing, though. She catches me every time. She tells me, "Pappa, read it straight, please, not funny."

Last night, though, we finished the book and she decided to make it clear to me just where I went wrong with Katy. She hopped off my lap and came around in front of me. She opened the book to the last page and pointed to the picture of Katy wearing her apron of many pockets and she said, firmly, "see, Pappa, pockets, not a backpack, pockets". She looked at me carefully, as if to make sure I understood, and then took the book back to put on the shelf. Her work completed, we went upstairs to go to bed.

Posted by Random Penseur at July 29, 2004 11:28 AM
Comments

Cute! Not much gets past them!

Posted by: Mick at July 29, 2004 11:39 AM

It's good that you've got her there to help you out like that. LOL

My tip for the constant retread book ordeal is to read two stories. You pick one and they pick one. That gets them exposed to new stuff and they tend to move off of the same book after a couple of repetitions.

Posted by: Jim at July 29, 2004 11:42 AM

LOL. I'm glad she was able to teach you the correct way to read so quickly. Some parents take at least a week!

Posted by: Rachel Ann at July 29, 2004 12:54 PM

Adorable, as always, Random. :-)

She loves you so much.

Posted by: Amber at July 29, 2004 02:40 PM

My nephew was the exact opposite. He LOVED it when I changed a word here and there. "Sam I am, I do not like green legs and spam"... I thought he was gonna pass out from laughing so hard.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 29, 2004 09:57 PM

The poor girl; she must think her Pappa is an idiot. It's funny because my girls love it when I mix it all up - they spend countless minutes correcting me until they realise that I must be an idiot to be humoured instead. So I'm with you.

Posted by: Simon at July 30, 2004 02:53 AM

Thanks for all the comments, y'all. Actually, with the Curious George books, she does like it when I screw up intentionally. She thinks it's funny. And then she reads it to me (because she actually knows every word on each page, just about) and then she deliberately screws it up and see what I'll do and she does it with this huge grin on her face. It's a lot of fun.

Posted by: RP at July 30, 2004 05:33 AM

Mixing the words up in the bedtime story was the first sign that I was about to fall asleep. I can remember one of my kids prying my eyelids open to establish eye contact and demanding that I finish the book.

Posted by: Annie at July 30, 2004 07:48 AM
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