Sleeping with books

Eddie sleeps with about 1/4 of his book collection in his bed every night (he probably has 20+ books in there on a good night).  He has two strings of holiday lights hanging on a book shelf (stars and spiders), which are on a timer to be on for about 2 hours each night.  It is enough light that he can easily read himself to sleep but not so much that it would interfere with sleeping.  And read he does!  I hear him flipping the pages and "reading" to himself every night for up to 45 minutes.  (I love that he can entertain and self-regulate himself!)

A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Mike posted a picture of his son sleeping with a book in his hand.  Conrad had fallen asleep while reading and was still holding the book up in the reading position.  It was hilarious.  And it started a conversation about how both our boys sleep with tons of books.  Clearly, we come from a family of educators who support reading...at any time of day!

Then a few days ago I get a text from Mike at 7:30am:

Mike's text: "Ignore that he looks like he's in a casket and note the foreground." 

It totally made me laugh...because I KNEW I'd find Eddie in a similar situation.  So I went into his room, took this picture, and sent it to Mike:

Ah, these silly boys!

Since we're on the topic of books: Every third Tuesday during our afternoon off together, Eddie and I go to the library.  Books are borrowed on a three week cycle so we make sure to return our old books and check out some new ones.  I've learned that it is very difficult to find books according to the Dewey Decimal system in the children's section, probably because small folks take them off shelves and reshelve them at random, if they reshelve them at all.  Plus, so many books are set upright on top of the bookcases so children can see the covers. So I usually just wander around looking at books until I find 4-6 that suite Eddie's particular interests that month.  Eddie goes through monthly phases of fascination, it seems.  One month it'll be dinosaurs, another month it'll be fish.  This month it is pirates and space "shubbles" (shuttles, or really, anything having to do with space exploration).  I assume this jump from topic to topic is normal...?  It's interesting because these fascinations are not usually related to the "theme" he's learning at school that week.  Sometimes I know why he's interested in a particular topic (like pirates...we took him to see that pirate movie recently), but other times I have no idea why he's suddenly interested in something we talk about all the time.  I guess his little brain just works that way.

One topic that has NEVER ceased to interest him is construction: tools/ heavy machinery/building things.

This Tuesday we borrowed two books about pirates, one about space travel, and a kid carpentry how-to book.  He found this one at a table in the big kid reading room and wanted to take it home, too.  We sat at the table together looking at all the pages for a good 10 minutes (quite a long time for him to sit quietly).  I love that he knows what most of the tools are, too.  He didn't know what a coping saw was, though, and now calls it a "copysaw."  Heehee.  Hopefully he and Dave can make something from the book--like the cargo ship or tool box!

He's asked me to read this book about 12 times since we got it yesterday. It isn't exactly "read out loud" material.