huddle around the Whisper-Ma-phone with me

I realized that I've been writing about the Bee's journey into reading a lot lately, and thought that I shouldn't neglect my Potato.

Lately, we've been reading The Lorax, a Seuss classic, nearly every night. The Potato is deeply enamored of the Lorax. In fact, he sometimes just walks around shouting, "Gluppity glupp! Schloppity schlopp!" just for the heck of it. (My own personal favorite line of the Lorax's? "Sir! You are crazy with greed.")

I love the Lorax too, because he's such a cranky old coot. We're talking about dressing the Potato up as the Lorax for Halloween, because a) it would be adorable, and b) isn't 'cranky old coot' the ideal Halloween costume for a three-year-old? (And did I mention the adorableness?) If I can convince the Bee to dress as the Once-ler, it would be perfect, but I'll have to start looking for elbow-length green satin gloves now, if I want to find them in her size by October. But she'll never agree, unless we make it the Once-ler who wears a sparkly dress.

The Potato has taken to 'reading' to himself every night, after his bedtime stories are over. He insists on keeping the books in bed with him (hmm, wonder where he got that idea?) We can hear him in his room, telling Mr. Bear and his other stuffed animals, the stories of whatever book was read to him that night. It's tremendously sweet. He still hasn't figured out how to read a book that's wearing a jacket, but at least he's stopped dismembering pop-up books. Or perhaps he just doesn't have any whole ones left to dismember. He came to work with me a few weeks ago, and one of my co-workers gave him a pop-up book about dinosaurs, which he had taken down to component parts in about 30 seconds. We're also still working on the idea that leaving books on the floor and then walking all over them is not the world's greatest idea.

Another book that's been getting a lot of play lately is Baseball Saved Us, which is about a Japanese-American boy who is interned with his family during World War II. Both of the kids are into this one, but the Potato seems to look at it quite a lot.