Our Little Reader

Anyone who knows Lucia knows she loves books. Reading books is her number-one favorite activity. Indulge me for a moment as I brag about her amazingly long attention span, her rapt fascination with words and pictures, her absolute absorption in turning pages. This week I watched from the kitchen while she played by herself for twenty minutes—a good portion of which she spent standing at the couch with a pile of books in front of her, selecting one after the other and paging through them.

We’ve become regulars at the library across the street, and Lucia charmed a librarian yesterday, who walked past as Lucia was turning pages of a book while sitting by my feet. When we went to the library this morning for the Mother Goose and More song and story time, that same librarian greeted Lucia by saying, “And here’s our little reader!” This mama’s heart swelled with pride. Yes, she is a little reader. She is indeed.

Lucia sat or stood with her eyes trained on the librarian throughout the program—she was just completely transfixed as the librarian led us in songs and read books. She smiled at the bouncing-baby songs and clutched or shook her egg shakers the whole time. It’s just hilarious to me to compare her happiness and comfort in a situation like this with her disinterest, hesitation, and clinginess during the gym classes we tried.

She is my baby. Andrew may have played a part in creating her…but she is my baby through and through. Give us a pile of books, lock us in the library, promise we won’t have to perform any athletic activity on demand—this version of bliss must have been passed from mama to baby in utero.

A note on Mother Goose and More. If I could select one part of Mountain View and take it with me back to Brooklyn, it would be this. It is just a wonderfully fun half hour, free, and packed to the gills with babies. The librarian who leads it is so engaging, fun, intelligent, and book-loving that each time we see her I’m certain I, too, should be a children’s librarian. And the crowd is purely Mountain View, from all over the world. Anyway, there is a babies and books program at the Brooklyn library, which we’ll have to try. (Though it has its own purely New York quality, too—you have to go early and get a ticket to get in.)

The picture with this post is from today. I bought her a new (used) book. She held it the whole way home.