My daughter does not suffer from a shortage of toys.

As a matter of fact, we have so many toys that they are threatening to take over our home.  We’ve gone so far as to dedicate an entire room of the house to said toys, in an effort to appease them, and yet it appears this has merely become a staging point for playtime expansionism.   They’ve already begun branching out and annexing toeholds in the living room, bedrooms, hallways, and even the bathrooms.

It’s Manifest Destoyny.    

But it’s not the stuffed animals, nor the electronic tablets, nor playhouses or wagons or any of the other normal baby toys that Daphne actually gravitates to.

Nope.  Books are her thing.

Since she was about 7 months old, if you handed Daphne a book she would first flip it right-side up, and then turn the pages (albeit sometimes en masse), and make little noises as if she were reading each one.  I’m pretty sure this is attributable to her mother steadfastly reading to her every single day of Daphne’s life.

We actually keep a sizable collection of books behind the couch downstairs.  And each night, before Daphne goes to bed, she and Jen spend about 30-45 minutes reading whatever book Daphne picks out.  Which is, more often than not, one of the Baby Einstein books, Ten Little Bluebirds, or Wheels on the Bus.  Again, and again, and again.

So it seems that there was some kind of reading challenge at the local library for kids over the summer.  If they read 5 books between May 30 and Aug. 27, they received a bookmark.
10 books and they get certificate.
15 a pencil.
And reading 20 or more books before the end of the summer earns them a trophy.

Bam.  Nice work, Mom.

I’m pretty sure Daphne hit 20 by the end of day 3.

This kid is actually dreaming of having a normal profile.

Hopefully this trend continues throughout D’s life, and she’ll always be a fan of the printed page.

If so, she would come by that quite naturally.  (Albeit with a lot of help from her mom.)

j.s.