At three years and three-plus months of age, Kaia still very much loves her books. Time really flies; I’ve already given away a lot of her “baby” baby books via our local buy-nothing group. I’m also starting to put aside another set of books she’s outgrown for my friend, who is due for her first baby in August. I just scored a huge set of older toddler books for her via our buy-nothing group, so she’s been pretty excited to have lots of “new” books to read, including on characters she’s familiar with, like Frozen/Elsa and Peppa Pig. As she’s getting older, she’s been showing more interest in my books, whether it’s my cookbooks, my Kindle, which I’ve explained to her I use for reading, and also the occasional hardcover book I have. Right now, I am currently reading and totally obsessed with Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water, which is quite a behemoth at over 700 pages long. I’ve been using a magnetic bookmark to hold my page. Kaia has been intrigued with both this book as well as the magnetic bookmark and constantly wants to flip the pages and (ugh) remove my bookmark.

Last night, she was struggling to sleep in her own in bed. I had left the book on the couch, where I had planned to do my bedtime reading. When I reappeared after she snuck out of her bed, I noticed that not only was my bookmark missing, but the page where the bookmark was had been torn. Lo and behold, she flashed my bookmark at me with a devilish grin and said, “Look, mummy! Look!” It was as though she was trying to say, “Look what I got! Catch me if you can!”

I struggled to get her back to bed. Chris eventually came over, instilled the fear of God in her, and she finally stayed in her bed. I wasn’t able to read as much as I wanted to last night. But I will admit: it is cute to see that Kaia is not only into her own books, but also her mummy’s.