Sunday, January 20, 2019

A Reading Family

The other day the kids were all curled up in the bottom bunk, each flipping through a book. Even the baby held a new board book we’d just borrowed from the library. Ryan and I whispered to each other and then each grabbed our own books and joined them.

My “littlest middlest,” as 2 ½-year-old C fondly calls herself, looked up with a big grin and whispered, “We’re a reading family, huh, guys?”

Yes. Yes, we are.

What we’re reading right now…



Dad: Abraham Lincoln… the library didn’t have Lincoln when we checked recently so he’s been reading the Good and the Beautiful biography instead. So far, he really likes it. Also, he frequently catches us complaining about something being heavy or it being a bummer that we’re all crammed into one room in our cabin and laughs, “People used to be so much tougher! Take Abraham Lincoln, for example…” before regaling us with a tale of how rough the Lincolns had it in their doorless shed as a home or with Abe’s crazy chores as a little kid.

Mom: Always too many books at once. Here we go... I’m super close to finishing the Bible Study I started with my moms’ group last year, Beautiful Mess. It’s so wonderful for building Mom-Confidence! I started Counterfeit Comforts on the Kindle the other day and really like it so far. It’s about leaning into God instead of into the, well, counterfeit comforts we often go to instead in times of stress, upset, etc. I am already a big fan but I will warn that there is A LOT of eating disorder back story so if you can’t read those things, skip this one. I’m also about halfway done with Mind Games, a Christian thriller I picked as my next review book. It’s taking me forever to read with all that I have going on at the moment but I really am enjoying it and dying to see how it all plays out.

5-year-old A: He has been reading a story from his The Good and the Beautiful K-Primer “My First Reading Book” or a book from their box of Beginner Books every single day. He has read all of them but has still been reading them again and again just because he is so excited to be reading! A library picture book he recently loved: The Little Snowplow.

3-year-old B: She’s been very much enjoying Curious George stories here lately, and has asked us to read Thelma the Unicorn again and again since we borrowed it from the library last month.

2-year-old C: C’s favorite animals are pigs and owls. Her most requested books from this last library trip have been Olivia and the Fairy Princesses and Sing a Season Song.

13-month-old D: Baby Sister loves to climb up onto a kiddie chair and flip through a book right now. She occasionally gets ahold of a paper book when the bigguns accidentally leave one out, but mostly we keep those put away and she gets board books. She got a just-the-right-size-for-tiny-hands farm animal board book for Christmas and loves to flip through it and make the animal sounds multiple times a day. 


Read-Alouds: Our whole family has been reading through Journeying Together any Sunday we don’t make it to church. There have been a few things Ryan and I skipped over so I would say that we generally recommend it but highly recommend that parents read each devotion themselves before reading it to the kids. The kids and I have a few chapters left of the second Heartwood Hotel book, The Greatest Gift, and all three of my oldest are really liking it. C is of course the least interested of the three but she’s still happy to sit and enjoy the chapter with the other two most days. She especially liked this week, when our Spanish lessons were just having them find words from the Heartwood Hotel chapter in My Word Book. We’re also reading through another Max Lucado book of Bible stories right now, The Story, and we're going to be listening to the first two Encyclopedia Brown stories on audiobook while we drive this afternoon!

A reading family, indeed.

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