Now I get it

In February we went on a vacation with three other couples. It was a five night stay, so I packed five books. My friends were not pleased. Like, not pleased in the sense that one friend in particular hid a book from me and even wrestled it away from me at one point. If it weren't for the fact that the book was from the public library, I'm pretty sure it would have ended up in the pool. Suffice it to say, I only made it through one book (and some magazines).

Mary Clare discovered chapter books about two months ago, and she is just tearing through them. We drove with my parents to dinner a week ago, and Mary Clare sat in the back next to my dad, with her nose buried in a book the entire time. When we pulled up, my dad said, "Mary Clare, it was great talking to you." She just gave him a confused look and asked, "Where are we?" To which my dad replied, "You are so your mother."

Fast forward to this morning, and I felt both my friends' and my parents' pain. I asked Mary Clare to please put down her book and get dressed. Five times. I then asked her to put down her book so I could do her hair. Five more times. And as I did her hair, she just stared longingly at her book.

"Mary Clare," I said, "I love that you love to read, but we have to figure out a better plan. I don't like asking you multiple times to do things, and you don't like it when I interrupt your reading. Maybe you need to get dressed first, and then you will have all of the time you need to read, uninterrupted."

Huge sigh.

"But Mom, I wake up in the morning, and I just can't wait to read my books. I just see them* and have to have them." She continued, "And then I don't want to put them down. Because I just have to know what happens next."

To which I could only reply, "I know what you mean."

We'll come up with a plan another day.
 

*We have started removing books from her room at night, both to keep her from reading at night and to encourage her to roll over and go back to sleep at 5:30 a.m., as opposed to getting up and starting to read.