El Pez Arco Iris Colores/Rainbowfish Colors AKA: Reading in Spanish When You Don't Speak It

My husband is Latino. Born and raised in East Los Angeles in an area dominated by Spanish speakers. I'm mostly of European decent, and was raised in an area of Orange County that had a lot of Spanish speakers. My son is a little bit of a lot of stuff. My husband doesn't speak Spanish. His parents didn't either because of the stigma associated with Spanish speaking. I've started and either failed or dropped Spanish class a few times. We'd like to raise our son to be bilingual, but we're at a pretty big disadvantage. I was recently at a friends home, who I'm pretty sure speaks Spanish. She's Latina, smidge of an accent. My in law's have accents too though, and speak just a few words of Spanish. My son brought me a book that was in all Spanish. It was from Disney Pixar Incredibles. So I read it. Now, I know from school and exposure how Spanish is supposed to sound. I can read it phonetically and get the gist of what is going on. I can read it aloud with some success. There were some giant words in that book though! My tongue was tripping over itself, and it's kind of embarrassing trying to read Spanish in front of (and to, as my friends 5 year old daughter was hunkered in with my son for the story) native Spanish speakers. After a few times of reading the book and continually tripping over the words, I just started doing observation exercises with my friends daughter. My friend offered to let me take the book to practice, but I declined. We have bilingual books at home. Partly to try to expose my son to other languages, but also because I'm going to school to be a preschool teacher, and we're taught to incorporate other cultures and languages. I think we currently have about 20 bilingual books, and they are read on occasion. I mostly read the books that my son brings me, but I will occasionally pull one out with intent. This brings me to "El Pez Arco Iris Colores/Rainbowfish Colors". My son brought me this book to read. Oddly enough, the last two books he's brought me have been about colors. So,I read El Pez Arco Iris Colores/Rainbowfish Colors. I always read both languages, even if I struggle. Luckily the hardest word in the book is anaranjado, the Spanish word for orange. And I can pronounce the other words in the book with reasonable success. I may be rolling my R's too much, but at least I can roll them, right? That's what I'm going with. Then, of course, he asks me to read the book over and over. And over. We read the book about 5 times last night,and about as many times today at least. The more times I read it, the more I trip over my tongue. On the bright side, I know that an octopus in Spanish is "el pulpo". We're both learning!

The Little Ones

I've made it a point to have all of our books easily accessible. My son can reach just about every book that we own, which has often led to piles of books on the floor. It's also resulted in having to "read" the 4 page plastic baby books over and over, with only 2 words to a page. You can easily read that sort of book about 30 times in 5 minutes. Then the second they loose focus, you throw it someplace weird to save your sanity. I've read that sort of book so many times that I've had to do things like explain the minute details (there aren't many),or I've also gotten so desperate that I've spelled out all of the words. "en ay en ay bee yu gee". Spelling sounds like words, right? I made the decision yesterday to put away the baby books. For my sanity. I will stick them in the baby toy box when we get around to number 2, but for now, they need to be out of sight so that my psyche can recover!

BIG B little b, What begins with B?

Batty baby begs for books, B b B! Dr. Suess's ABC. This is a book that I remember my mom reading a lot when I was younger. I'm not sure I remember her reading it to me, but she read it to my brothers a ton. This is my sons current book on repeat. We've read it 5.5 times tonight, and while it goes by in just a few minutes, I'm still surprised that he sits through books that are this long. We're having a wild night. He wouldn't go to sleep, and since we cosleep and he was all over daddy, I had to bring him back out to the livingroom where he brought me the book and kept shoving it back in my hands and signing "please" every time I finished reading it. I'm pretty sure that my favorite of the pages is B. It's just a lot of fun. We got ours through the Dr. Suess book club (and I hear it's his birthday this month!) and my sons cousin David, an avid advanced reader at the ripe old age of 10.5 years, has been giving my son lots of his old books, so we have a board book of this one for the diaper bag, too. It's probably my favorite Dr. Suess book. I love the alliteration, even though it's just all tongue twisting. After having had a break from reading TOO much the past few nights, it was both fun and exhausting to give this book so many reads! At 63 pages, it's not a short read, especially for a toddler to sit through. But he does it and then begs for more! He finally called it quits twice after asking me to read it again.

I Love You Through and Through

Today my son asked to read yesterdays book again, repeatedly, and after dinner he brought me "I Love You Through and Through" to read. This was another gift from Mimi (my mom) and it was a Valentines Day gift. Funny enough, I also got him a book with a similar concept. (The one I got him is called "I Love You Every Little Bit") We occasionally do things like that. I once ran into her at a store and we both had the movie "Airheads" in our cart. "I Love You Through and Through" is a really cute, really simple book. It's just different things that the voice of the book likes about the child in the book. It's pretty useful to teach body parts with, too. The book also goes through a few opposites that you can act out such as "I love your happy side....your sad side". It's just a really cute book that lets you cuddle and give kisses. Today's book count: Welcome to the Fire Station: He asked to read this one 3 times. I hid it while he was distracted. I am a Bunny: I think we read this one an additional 10 times today. It's pretty, and an easy read, but mommy needs a break from it. I had to hide this one, too. I Love You Through and Through: We made it to 7.5 times before he tossed it over on his own. Zoe's First Book of Seasons: Mommy 4 times, daddy 1 time. Total book count for March 5, 2014: 24.5. My mouth is dry.

I am a Bunny (aka, the book driving me batty today!)

My mom (her grandma name is Mimi) is an avid reader who, unfortunately, does not live in the same state as we do, and so she is left to "spoil" my son from afar. Luckily, this mostly happens in the form of clothing, books, and Target cards!

The most recent book that we got from her came in a birthday package for daddy, along with some St. Patty's day goodies for the rest of us. Among the loot was "I am a Bunny" by Ole Risim and illustrated by Richard Scary. This is a book that I had a copy of as a child and that my mom felt was necessary for our collection.

This is a book with a really cute story about the things that this little bunny named Nicholas does during the various seasons, and the illustrations are beautiful! There are gorgeous flowers, detailed frogs, butterflies, and birds. It is a really well done book.

I've lost count of how many times I've read it to him since yesterday. I don't think I've quite read it 10 times this morning so far (it's 9:42 am right now!), but I think since yesterday afternoon it has been read in upwards of 20 times, 2 of which were by daddy who said "this book is actually really cute".

Welcome!

Welcome to my first blog post!

My name is Liz. I am a Child Development major and stay at home mom to an 18 month old boy who LOVES to be read to. Growing up, I've always loved to read (my mom is an avid reader) and I made it a point to have a lot of books available for my son. at last count, we had well over 300 books! They are partly for my son, and partly for use when I start teaching preschool.

The books that we have for children are all accessible to our son. We have cardboard books over his toy box, and the rest of the books on the shelf with mommy and daddy's books, toward the bottom where he can reach them. The result, especially having a boy, is that many, many books end up on the floor, and many others get pushed onto our laps with a whining grunt to be read to. Thankfully, this grunt is slowly and surely being replaced with the sign for "please"!

Children love repetition, and my son is no different. I've read "Mr. Brown can Moo, Can You?" so many times I've nearly memorized it. This is where the torture part of the title of my blog comes in! My son has been sitting still through entire Dr. Suess books for several months. We have a pile of books that we've had to hide to take a break from. The list of those books is on the side of this page!  

It's recommended to read to children for at least 20 minutes a day, and given my sons taste in books and his love of repetition, we surpass that most days. My mouth gets dry. My throat starts to hurt. I try to get daddy to read to give me a break, and he often at least tries, but my son wants me to read. I love to read, but reading aloud is tiring but necessary.

And so it begins, the joys (and torture) of reading aloud!