Big A, little a, what begins with A?

Aunt Annie's Alligater. A....a....A!

I love Dr. Suess books, especially ones that are educational like his ABC book! Furthermore, I've always loved to read. I used to get in trouble when I was little for reading too much. I would read when I was supposed to be cleaning my room. I would read when I was supposed to be setting the table. I would read for hours in the bathtub...and while sitting on the toilet! I got in trouble most for that last one. Hee hee. Because of my love for reading and how it has helped me in my life, I'm trying to instill that same love into Chloe Jo. If she decides she doesn't like to read, it won't be a big deal, but I will be disappointed. I love Dr. Suess and reading those books to her now and I'm looking forward to reading The American Girl series to her later. So far, though, it looks like she is going to be a book worm like her Momma!

One thing I have been doing to help her learn to love reading is taking her to Story Time at our local Library. It is so fun! I started going to one about 5 minutes away from us 3 weeks ago. That Story Time was specifically for 1 year olds. Unfortunately, it ended at the end of April and they aren't going to begin again for her age group until June so I had to regroup. We have several branches of our Library so I found out that another one has a story time through May for infants through 36 months and we went to that one this week. I ended up liking that Library better because the whole children's area is so cute! It's decorated with trains and has a train that run along a track at the ceiling and a big engine that the kids can get into and play in. I'll have to take pictures next week! The really neat thing about going to the story time close to us was that there was always an activity that the children did at the end. The first week we went, we made trains out of construction paper. The second week was all about our bodies and we made this:

Chloe Jo was one of the only ones that would lay down to be traced around. I'm also loving the fact that she can interact with other children. She is so shy and gets anxious very easily so I'm hoping this will help her in that area. Russell was extremely shy when he was a child and now is a preacher so maybe she just needs to grow out of it. After story time I pick out a few books for her to check out and we read them every day, sometimes several times, and take them back the next week. Along with having Library books for her to read, I also have a basket of board books that she can look at in our living room. The regular books are put up so she won't rip them and I get a few of them out once a day to read to her.
At any time when Chloe Jo is awake our living room has toys and books scattered everywhere. I love it tat she likes her books right now and hope that she will continue to love them!
Since we have been going to the Library every week, I've also started checking out books for myself. Russell had been buying books and bringing them home for me to read, but I think it's a bit of a waste of money since I can go to the Library. My sister found a list of the top books of all time and is reading some of them this year. I thought that was a great idea and found this list for me to start on. There are a lot of different lists for this, but I found that I liked the list I linked to the best. I checked out Don Quixote and am enjoying it very much! I am especially excited to read Moby-Dick and the Jane Austen novels (though I've read most of her works already). Maybe I can keep this brain of mine from going too stale while I'm a stay-at-home mom!