Greg bought me Tina Fey’s Bossypants for Valentine’s Day. Proof positive, he knows if I make time to read, I want to laugh and I absolutely adored reading this book. That is, when I was allowed to read.
The baby senses I’m doing something she can’t control when I’m holding a book.
She will spend the next several minutes, tap dancing in front of me to draw my attention away from anything that does not involve sitting, surrounded by a series of plastic ducks with Ernie from Sesame Street singing in the background.
She swats the book as I turn the page, using her bodyweight against me, she times her strike perfectly, sending the book flying through the air and I lose my page. Every time.
Hanna sees we’re reading and begins one of her Ivy & Bean books. Exactly fourteen seconds into her book she begins to read over me shouting, “Mommy, okay, Mommy, listen to this. Listen!” While I try to listen, my eyes are still on Bossypants (p. 7) as I have had the book flung out of my hand, I figure page seven is a safe choice and regardless of whether I’ve already finished that particular page, it’s not going to kill me to laugh all over again.
I have successfully reached page ten without incident and Chloe is desperate to tear the book to shreds.
Her next trick is to begin a series of rapid spinning motions around the family room until she flops on the floor giggling. I simply can’t read while a two year old is spinning out of control–both literally and figuratively. Not only is it distracting and vomit inducing for both of us but it’s dangerous as there are too many sharp corners. She knows this and uses the 90 degree angles as leverage as I put down page seven and move her into the centre of the room.
She manages to run off with the book, stumbling from her inner ear fluids being completely out of whack and smushes the book into the door, crumpling page seven in its entirety. I’m okay with this as I am confident I have page seven completely memorized.
I turned to pour myself a cup of tea which requires the use of both hands and Chloe wastes no time finding a purple marker where she begins colouring in my book in such a way I can no longer make out any of the type on several consecutive pages. She leaves page seven untouched because she figures the crumpling was enough and she senses I’m secretly okay with any future damage that may result from this duel to page seven.
Ellie enters, “What are we doing? I’m bored.”
Me: Why don’t we read a book?
Ellie: Nah. I want to play Battleship.
Me: Great, why don’t you and Hanna play Battleship and I’ll read my new book.
I run down to the basement to retrieve the game and upon my return, I stumble upon the following scene.
Chloe on the floor on her back, Hanna is holding one of her legs, Ellie the other and they are dragging her around the room. She seems to be zooming around rather quickly considering she’s riding bareback on berber carpet.
Oh I see. They’re using my new book as a slip ‘n slide.
