When we brought Jacob home from Ryazan to live with us in Texas he was 10 months old. Sometime within the first 12-18 months of him living with us, we acquired (I don't say bought because frankly I don't know how we got it) the book Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman. Oddly enough Jacob never really liked it. In fact, he often cried if we tried to read it to him. Terri and I always found it strange in an ironic sort of way that he was so sensitive about a baby bird searching high and low asking all he would meet, "Are you my mother?" But he was sensitive about it so the book was shelved in favor of books about dogs and trains and dinosaurs and pirates.
I bring all this up now, more than 4 years later because tonight Jacob insisted we find the book Are You My Mother. Apparently his kindergarten class read it last week at school. Being the dutiful father I am I found it (in Stella's room to no surprise). And here is the crazy part . . . Jacob read it to me. For the first time, he read a book. It wasn't memorized and he couldn't make out every word without help, but he slowly and steadily made it through 62 pages of the story of baby bird searching for his mother and finding his way home. I can't believe our little boy is learning to read and has learned so much already.
And most of all I am stunned that the first book he ever finished was this book. That he read with me. After I searched high and low for him and he looked for me. And we found each other. At home. Together.
This Dad stuff can be pretty cool.
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