In Which My Friend Ellen Goes Home And Connor Picks A Book

Ellen flew back home today, which makes me sad.  I wish that she lived closer!  I need to convince all my friends to move to the Pacific Northwest.  I figure I have a pretty good chance of doing it if I only allow them to come up and check things out in the summer time.  They can find out about the winters here once they've already signed a contract for a house.

So after we dropped Ellen off at the airport, Connor and I went to the library and picked up a learning box!  We haven't done as many of these this summer, and I want to get back into the habit. 

The box we picked out was chosen because of a major event; Connor spontaneously asked for a specific book for the first time!  Normally I pick out two books and he chooses between them.  Well, this time we were stopped by a display chatting with Carol, the children's librarian, and Connor started staring fixedly at the display and signing "want, want" over and over again.  I wasn't really responding to him as I was busy talking, so then he started vocalizing and doing it-- which gets my attention really quickly in the library.  So I picked a random book off the display and showed it to him. 

"Do you want this one?" I asked.
"No," he signed emphatically, and then went back to signing "want" and staring at the display again.

We repeated this exact same scenario with seven or eight books, with Connor shaking his head "no" more and more pointedly.  He was starting to get a frustrated look on his face.  Obviously Mom just wasn't getting it.

Finally I picked up the last picture book on the display-- a beautifully illustrated version of Rabindranath Tagore's poem "Paper Boats."  Connor's face lit up, he waggled his eyebrows at me, and nodded "Yes!" 

So we brought home Paper Boats, and I will read this book to my child as many times as he can stand to hear it.  I'll also scour the used bookstores for a copy for us to commemorate the occasion.  Connor picking out a book all by himself may not seem like a very big deal, but for this child to want something enough to actually persistently ask for it is extremely rare and deserves celebration!  And also the fact that the kid's request was for a book makes me really, really happy.  You know how I am about books.

Anyway, we picked out the "Ocean" box to take home, and I think I'll take him to the Working Waterfront Maritime Museum as a field trip so he can see as many boats as he'd like.

Yay for reading!

~Jess