On my nightstand right now (it's not what you'd expect)
While he definitely has his 15-year-old-girl moments of door slamming and eye-rolling and ignoring me out of sheer embarrasment that I am doing something drastic and horrifying like car-dancing to Rihanna, most of the time having a 7-year old boy is wonderful. Lil E is full of questions and sarcasm and quirkiness and sensitivity -- I love all of that about him. He's also full of words.
The boy can talk. And write. And read. He does all like he is devouring the space in front of him. Oh, how I relate.
Just like he does during his school day, we have quiet reading time at our house. He curls up on the couch or on his bed, paging through his kid encyclopedia or poring over a chapter book. It fills me up to see him there, deep inside the lines on the page.
I let him read during church -- books have always been a spiritual home for me -- and he's made his way through much of the Wimpy Kid series while we sing hymns and pray. Last weekend while I was at BlissDom, he packed up the books he'd finished to share with his dad. When he returned home, he told me his dad finished them quickly.
"I put them on your bed," he said. "So you can read them next and then we will all know what they are all about."
The world won't shift because of the Wimpy Kid books. But my son's life has. And he wants me to get that.
So Wimpy Kid it will be. They've pushed ahead of my Pema Chodron meditations and the discipline book my mom is dying for me to read and the Ann Patchett novel I began on the airplane. I like those books there, reminding me to be more patient when the teen angst slips out. This little boy's literary adventures are simple now, but so important. And just starting.
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