Bedtime Stories

I am always on the search for children's books, as I'm trying to build my son's library so he doesn't have to be read the same old stuff day after day,  (I'm mean a kid can only take so much Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Cat In The Hat.) and because I often enjoy reading kid's books more than adult books. (What can I say, they are quick reads and have pictures!) Rowen is only 8 months old but he has really enjoyed being read to since he was 2 months old.  That is unless it's bedtime..... Now, officially my son's bedtime is 7:00pm, but we really start the whole bedtime process around 5:00pm.  He starts to get whiny so I get his dinner ready, while I listen to his grunts of displeasure.  He eats around 5:30 and is done in less than ten minutes.  (He is a super fast eater, and pretty much whines through the whole dinner process because I'm not getting the food into his mouth fast enough.)  Right about this time I am praying my husband will be home soon to take over.   Kurt is usually home by 6:00pm, and if not, will consequently receive glances of disappointment from me.  Ro is usually good with Kurt until 6:30.  Then  it's either bath time, which he usually likes, or if he is really in rare form, time for bed!  We usually ditch the bedtime story after we've only read two pages, and Rowen's whines have escalated to borderline crying.

Last night, after countless evenings of struggling to make it to bedtime with minimal crankiness, I realized we need to be getting this kid ready for bed sooner, especially if we want to nurture him by reading the bedtime story.  I had gone to Barnes and Noble earlier that day to pick up Out of Oz (the last of the Wicked series) which I was thrilled for as I really enjoyed the series and have not read a book(with the exception of children books) in the last 8 months. (Did I mention that Rowen is 8 months?)  I of course dropped  by the children's section to see what was new and I stumbled across this great little gem of a book called red sled by Lita Judge.  Immediately I knew this was the book to buy since we had just given Ro a Flexible Flyer sled for Christmas. 

 The book is maybe about 20 pages with full page pictures.  The story is basically about a boy(or girl, I couldn't tell so we made it a boy) who has a red sled and he leaves it outside.  Who should come along but a curious bear, who sees the sled, steals it, and proceeds to sled down the mountain!  As the bear is sledding, he picks up some other woodland critters like a moose, a porcupine, a possum, a raccoon, etc., you get the picture.  All these animals are on this tiny red sled being whisked down the mountain until they crash (they all survived thankfully), and return the sled.  The best part about this book is that there might be a total of 20 words to the whole thing, with words like "rooooeeeee! alley-oop! whoa! eeeeeee!" and other sound effects of that nature to depict the sled ride.  It's one of those books where you use your imagination to make up your own story.  Needless to say my son was captivated the entire time (no whining or anything!) with smiles when we made great sound effects.  And we ended the story by telling him that if he left his sled outside, animals would take it, so there is a moral there too!  I'm not sure if it was the fact that we got him ready for bed earlier or the book, but on this one, I'd like to think I bought him a great book!

All the animals sledding down the mountain.  Whoa!