Story time with lovely Nana

Here is my mom, whom I call Mommy and her grandchildren call Nana. She has always been a lover of books, her favorite being the Bible. Here she is reading an old book with photographs of a baby doll who is lost in the woods and befriends a teddy bear and other forest creatures. It is a book that I completely adored as a child but seemed to have forgotten until my mom whipped it out at the beach house and started reading, instantly capturing the interest of all the kids (besides Ivan, who was napping at the time.) 

I never realized it before, but I so appreciate the way that she sculpted in all her children a desire to read. She made books a consistent part of our lives and took us to weekly visits to the library for story hour, the same library that my dear deceased Aunt Lucille worked as a librarian. When I was about seven years old, I used to pretend that my book collection was a library and put a card in the back of every single book. I still have some of them with the small index card, stuck on the page with pink ballet tape, and the words "Name" and "Date" scrawled on top with blank lines underneath. As I recall, this was some very important business at the time. 

So, I am striving to carry on this love of books over to my boys and, to my delight, Victor has always been obsessed with books. Having received many over his four years as gifts and as local thrift store purchases, he has acquired an outrageously huge book collection. 

The thing is, I feel guilty that I don't read to Ivan nearly as often as I have read to Victor. I really do try but, unless he is absolutely exhausted, he is just too restless and would rather get down and explore. Still, he has some favorites that he enjoys, and I can tell that he loves our weekly library visits, almost as much as Vic and I do. I am hoping that he gets into reading soon though because, in my opinion, there is nothing quite as relaxing and wonderful as curling up on the couch with my baby and reading a good children's book. I guess, only time will tell.