It occurs to me that in order for one to successfully write a book blog one must in theory at least read a book. To completion. More than once a year.
Many things are getting in the way of this endeavor. There's the usual. You know, educating the children. Nursing the infant. Life with a toddler who today removed and lobbed his dirty diaper at my head from his playpen/timeout...because he was out of things to throw. Paltry excuses, I know, and I shouldn't even mention them since they aren't actually the most prohibitive to my foiled attempts at reading. No, the reason I really find it hard to read these days is that said toddler is a bookavore.
By bookavore, I do not mean that he so loves to read that he has figuratively digested every single volume of his extensive Eric Carle collection. Though to be fair to the little fella, he probably does know Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by heart now (I know I do). I have seen the term used to described people who consume books in this manner. No, I mean literally. He eats books. Like a devious little goat. My paperback copy of Donna Tartt's The Secret History survived over a decade of attic storage only to be gnawed around the edges in the comfort and relatively safety of my hopefully rodent-less living room. I've told people not to loan me books, not because I don't want to read them (I do) or I won't find the time (a 60/40 chance), but because I'm afraid my kid will eat them. There, I've said it. Envy me.
So the natural solution to this problem is obvious. E-books! Wonderful, lovely e-books! Have smartphone, will travel. And I do. But I hadn't upgraded to a tablet or big screened mega-phone yet so frankly my eyes start to hurt. That and I find myself in a fairly constant game of tug-of-war over whether I'm going to read on it or the above-mentioned tot is going to talk to Siri. I've actually just given up and programmed her to say his name.
As I continue on this rambling account that is increasingly calling my mothering skills into question, it occurs to me that I ought to name my children. For purposes of this blog, I will call them Thing 1 (boy, 7), Thing 2 (girl, 6), Toot (boy, 21 months, goat), and Puddle (boy, 4 months). Moving on.
Thing 1 and Thing 2 have tablets. They were Christmas gifts from their Nana two Christmas's ago and they love them possibly more than they love me. We have already had to declare the dinner table a "device-free" zone and set various other restrictions in place. One of the words in Toot's perhaps 20 word vocabulary is "tab-it." I've even seen Puddle eyeing them with envy. I discourage this media addiction. I am a kick-them-outside kind of mom. I like nothing better than for my children to finish the day smelling of dirt and sunshine, leaving a healthy ring of grime around the bathtub when the water drains. The only way to break this hold that electronic devices has over them, then, obviously, is to lead by example. "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't work. So yesterday, when the Kindle Fire HD6 my mom bought me for my birthday arrived, I responded accordingly, and hudded in a remote corner of the living room with my back to them all, snarling, "My birthday-present! We wants it, precious! We wantsss it!!"
So, yeah, I have a tablet! An awesome, amazing pink tablet!! And I have already made mad progress on the book I'm currently reading. No, I'm not telling you which one it is. I've decided to only tell you what I like about books after I've read them because quite frankly if a book isn't doing it for me I'm more likely to put it down and pick up another one than to soldier on so I can give it a complete review. Now, if you'll excuse me. I've got some reading to do.
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