Books Before Breakfast

Last week, tornado sirens woke us at 5am and we all trooped down to the basement.  Our basement is in the traditional 50's style -- cold cement floors, stacks of boxes and forgotten toys.  Ohhhh, the forgotten toys!  Toys that were discarded years ago as too babyish were suddenly treasures.  The boys played and then Matthew discovered the old rocking chair.  "Hold me!"  he squealed.  "Hold me like I'm a baby!" 

Cameron, much too chipper for so early in the morning, gave an excited monologue as I rocked my 'baby.'  "I wonder if it's a real tornado!  What if it hit our house?  What if we were like, 'Doh, doh, doh, I guess we can go upstairs now, the sirens have stopped!' and then we went upstair and the HOUSE was GONE!"

Fortunately, when the sirens did stop, we opened the door at the top of the stairs and the house remained.  But now we were all wide awake and up really early . . . "I'm going to read Harry Potter," announced Cameron.  He settled on the couch with his book.

"I'm going to read, too," said Matthew.

"Oh, do you want me to read to you?" I asked.

"No."

"Well, I don't know if Cameron will read to you right now.  He's in the middle of his book."

Matthew marched to the book shelf, haughtily selected a board book and stalked over to the couch.  "I said, 'I'm going to read,."

He sat down next to Cameron, opened his book and began, "Hi.  My name is Emily Elizabeth.  I have a dog."

He recited the book from beginning to end, word for word, flipping the pages at the right time.  When he finished, he closed it and said, "I did it!  I can't believe it!  I CAN READ!  I can't believe I did it!  I read the whole book!" 

Cameron better finish up Harry Potter soon.  Matthews's right on his heels!