Go read to your kids

I have rediscovered the joy of reading to my children before bed. It's sad that this very important habit stopped and I'm not quite sure when it happened, but as of tonight the habit is back! I knew reading before bed had to come back when I packed up the library books today to bring back to the library and realized that I had not taken the time to read any of the books to my children. That did not make me feel good. I love reading to my kids and we miss out on special time together when we don't sit down to read. Last month I was supposed to be working on my goal to read to my kids more, but as you can tell I failed miserably. I am now committed this month to succeed at this goal. All I did this evening was put one of the new library books in the living room and Kate immediately picked it up and wanted me to read it to her. Then several other books were brought out into the living room and all of the kids were looking at or reading books. It was a great sight! In the past, the older girls had lost interest in listening to me read and they would go off and read on their own, but tonight all of the kids listened to the story. Zach is not a big fan of reading, which is one reason I think that I have gotten out of the habit of reading to the younger kids, but even he was quiet and listening. That may have been because I was reading a story from his book that he received from the Dr.'s office. The feeling I got as I was reading was that I was satisfying a craving that the kids didn't realize was there until I was reading. I had to smile when Zoe suggested that I get back into the habit of reading to them before bed. That is exactly what I am going to do.