shattering your illusions

I realize that I come across as the epitome of cool. I very often intimidate people with the essence of my coolness, and I can't really blame them. I do reek of extreme and utter coolness - as obviously evidenced by my ability to use a form of the word "cool" three times in this blog post already. Yet under my exterior of cool-iosity, I hide a deep, deep secret. I apologize for shattering your illusions in such a way, but it turns out that I am....

a nerd.

Especially when it comes to the library. My favorite gift from Shawn for our first married Christmas was a library card. I have a long list of classic books that I am determined to read through before I die, and I may or may not get giddy at the smell of a library.

So you can imagine my excitement about taking Jude to our local library for his very first visit. I wanted to see if they had a summer reading program for pre-readers, and finally had the chance to stop by last Thursday. It turns out that our library does have a summer reading program in which you can read to your child and get "credit" for each half hour until you've read for a total of eight hours. I LOVE summer reading programs. It was one of my favorite parts of summer growing up (that and our subdivision-wide hide and seek games), and I'd been known to read through the entire reading list in a week. Ahem...I mean...I spent my summers doing uber cool things like...getting manicures, shopping at the mall, and flirting with boys.

So after Jude and I made our way to the kids' section, I gasped and said, "Jude! Look at allllll these books. Do you see all of them? Did you know that alllll these books are here for you to read and learn? You can learn about so many different worlds, and people, and animals, and other things through these books, kiddo! Are you excited?" To my delight, Jude mimicked my gasp when I set him down and looked around in awe at the sheer volume of worlds now open to him through the world of reading.

I let Jude choose three books completely on his own, and he chose one book about an African-American family traveling north to escape segregation, one book about families and inherited physical traits, and one book about a bear who didn't want to go to bed.

Once the books were chosen, we played with some puzzles and hung out for a bit longer, and then it was time to go home. I gave Jude one of the books to read on his way home, and he was delighted. He boisterously laughed with joy each time he turned a page (these pictures were taken a stop light, when he was fascinated by one particular page):

I think I may be in danger of passing along my library-nerdy-ness to my children. I have to admit though, I'm pretty much okay with that.