Quid pro quo.

When I was little my babysitter, Donna, lived right next door. Most days after she got home from school I would pull together a hefty stack of books and march across the lawn to her back door. Donna invariably answered my call and would spend seemingly endless amounts of her precious teenager free time reading to me. Blessed with book-obsessed offspring, my mom calls it payback.

With the almost-six-year-old well into his own stack of reading, (except for nightly bed time stories read to him by my husband because "he can do all the voices") I was just waiting for the almost-two-year-old to make that story connection. This weekend he did. In spades.

There is now a stack of about 14 board books, all with conveniently-shortened-to-one-word titles; like "Uh oh" for We're Going on a Bear Hunt (Michael Rosen) and "Fly" for The Very Lonely Firely (Eric Carle) next to the comfy chair in my living room. Rest assured (or actually, not), I know when I walk in the door this evening I will be greeted with "Mama! Hand. Walk. Sit. Read!"