Nothing like a book to make you smile

So I've been meaning to blog about teeth, books and books on teeth for quite some time now. As you may recall when Noah is sleepy he likes to pull on my lips and shove his hands in my mouth. It’s as darling as it is uncomfortable. Crazily enough his mouth fixation doesn’t stop there. He often busts into hysterics if you open your mouth REAL wide. Mark is particularly good at this. For a while we thought Noah was amused by the sounds Mark was making but soon realized it wasn’t the noise but Mark’s gaping maw that had Noah in hysterics. Noah is also delighted by the sight and sounds of someone brushing their teeth. He beams and giggles when I brush every morning and when I'm done I rinse my brush out and then brush at his two little teeth a few times. One day this week I finished brushing my teeth and put him down on the floor and he started crying – he hadn’t gotten his teeth brushed and he was horribly overwrought about it. My favorite example of his fixation is his love of teeth related literature. My mom gave Noah a lift flap book called “Toes, Ears and Nose.” It goes “Inside my mittens I’ve got (lift the mitten shaped flap) fingers. Inside my boots I’ve got (boot flap) toes. Under my hat are two (ear flaps) ears. And beneath my scarf is a (scarf flap) nose.” You get the idea. Anyway Noah loves this book and I’ve read it a million times in a squeaky voice while grabbing Noah’s ears, nose, etc. with Noah lifting the flaps. Mark was the first to notice that when the book was sitting around on the floor and Noah would pick it up to look at it himself he would invariably flip right to the “Inside my mouth I’ve got (flap) teeth” page and pull the little girls hands away from her mouth. He does this over and over and over again. So much so that the poor little girl is missing several fingers and has damn near had her whole hands pulled off. It is priceless. I hope Noah is destined to be a dentist rather than on his way to developing some sort of weird fetish.

And since I’m already discussing books I have to tell you what a HUGE fan I am of children’s literature. I adore children’s picture books in particular. So much so that my 9 month old already owns over 50 books – approximately half of which I have purchased from the Children’s Book of the Month Club in the last couple of months. At this point most of these books are technically too old for Master Noah but I enjoy reading them all the same. If I start to read “Where the Wild Things Are” and Noah loses interest halfway through and wanders off I finish it out loud just for me. And often he comes back. He seems to have already developed a real interest in books and I hope that it sticks with him.

Here are a few of my favorites - they aren't in any particular order. I won’t list the old classics like Sendak and Silverstein because everyone knows those.

1. “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus” by Mo Willems, creator of Cartoon Network’s "Sheep in the Big City." Also like “Knuffle Bunny,” “Time to Say Please.”
2. “How do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?” by Yolen & Teague. I love the behavior modeling, rhyming and illustrations of dinosaurs in child-like poses. We have four from this series.
3. “Olivia” by Ian Falconer. Really more of a girls book but I owned the first one before Noah was born and have bought the second in the series. Arty pig with attitude.
4. “Dinosailors” by Lund & Fine. Super rhyming and fun. Includes dinosaurs vomiting which is always cool.
5. “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” by Barrett. The year I taught first grade my kids made me read this book aloud repeatedly. They loved the idea of food falling out of the sky.
6. “How I Became a Pirate” by Long & Shannon. Who doesn’t love gnarly pirates?
7. “David Gets In Trouble” by David Shannon. Rough scribble-like drawings look very cool and the small amount of text make them ideal for younger readers.
8. “On the Day You Were Born” by Frasier. Kind of hippie crunchy, but very touching and the appendix makes for great reading later when kids want to understand the scientific principles behind weather and gravity.
9. “Tails” by Van Fleet. The textures and movement in this book make it excellent to read to kids as young as Noah’s age. My friend Dina gave it to us as a baby shower gift and it was one of my favorites.
10. “If You Give a Pig a Pancake” by Numeroff & Bond. Kids love the over the top silliness of these books and the circular path of the story.
Hope someone gets something out of that - other than me of course.