Wendi {at random}

It all started with a teacher.

A teacher who finally did what I could not: Convince Camden that books are good. Books are entertaining. Books are places in which you can get lost. That's what he calls reading now - "getting lost in a book".

And so this teacher has lit a fire in my son that has captured my heart. He reads. All the time. He sets up a class full of stuffed animals (most are elephants, but they're not prejudiced. Some are other species), props himself in my OLD kid-sized rocker, and pretends to be his teacher. 

His favorite genre is historical fiction in the form of the Magic Tree House series. He's a history buff (gets that totally 100 percent from his dad), so there's enough real stuff in these books to grab onto while his imagination takes off. I don't think Elk liked it. He's kissing the blanket here.

Benjy tried hard to be a part of this class of Wild Things. He came downstairs where I was resting my swollen ankle to tell me that Mr. Richert wouldn't let him talk. I told Benjy to set up his own animals and be their teacher in his room. Ding. You could see the light bulb brighten right on top of his head. 
He read Just Me and My Dad to them, almost verbatim from our many, many times reading this book. He wanted desks, so I showed him how Michelle and I used to use books to make desks. (Actually, we made Barbie apartments with our library books.) He set up his little guys behind their new desks, ran to Camden's room to borrow an American flag for the pledge, and sat down with his class to begin the day. 

In the next instant, it was nap time. The guys were put to bed because they're preschoolers of course, and the other Mr. Richert went to sleep. My two little Mr. Richerts taking naps with their students until they return to school tomorrow, students themselves.