The kids have come of age. At least the two oldest ones have. They have both reached, this year, an age at which they will tolerate the reading of books with long chapters and few pictures. Tonight we began The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe – which I have been waiting excitedly to read aloud since David was born. They started chapter books earlier this year with the Droon and the Magic Treehouse books. But they were both weaned on Beatrix Potter – and the sophistication of her language puts most modern grownup books to shame.
Now I'm reading them Lewis' Narnia books at night and Kris is reading them The Hobbit during the day (Found a Web site open when I got home this evening that provided a pronunciation guide for gnomish names — never realized Kris was as geeky as I am; she'd always seemed like the cool one).
In any case, I haven't posted anything here in a long time that wasn't a work-related note – so I figured I'd crow about this milestone. Happy day. And not just because I'm proud of their attention spans, and not just because the Lewis and Tolkien books were among my very favorites as a kid – but because I finally have an excuse to dive back into these worlds myself! And live in them while reading with silly voices. The amazing perks of parenthood. (Next up, the Oz books, which my mom tells me she started reading my sister and I when my sister and I were just about the same age David and Sofia are now.)
