Caught in the story

Vivian has a new favourite book: “Are you my mother?” by PD Eastman.

I was listening to her and her dad last night over the baby monitor:

“Do you want Sneetchs?”

“No.”

“Pajama Time?”

“No!”

“Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus?”

“No-oooo,” she says, in an hilarious “you’re pretty slow tonight, Dad,” tone.

There’s rustling on the baby monitor and something falls: Vivian is grabbing a book for herself.

“This one again?”

This one is, of course, “Are you my mother.”

He reads it to her. But when I come in to nurse her, nothing will do but that I read it to her again. So I do. She likes it; it’s full of words she can say (up, down, bird, jump jump jump). But as I get to the bit at the end where the baby bird is picked up by the steam shovel, she gets quiet and tense, and makes a big worried noise: Ouuoo. She goes limp with what seems to be delight and relief when the baby bird makes it back to his nest and his mother returns.

I think she is, for the first time, caught up in the story.

An amazing thing to see.