Bedtime stories

This week Tim has been away in Suffolk, which has meant his standard evening task of reading bedtime stories has fallen to me. I don’t really remember when bedtime stories became his job, but they usually are, and tbh, I quite enjoy that – after a full day of children it’s quite nice to have a slightly less child intensive evening, although I always do good night kisses and frequently put Small back into bed when necessary.

Anyway, this week, as I was saying, I’ve got to read stories. Only a few times, as they’ve been elsewhere or sat on by others two evenings, but that’s still three stories.

The first evening it was a Katie Morag story from More Katie Morag Island Stories. I think it was Jan who introduced us to Katie Morag, and she’s a firm read aloud favourite with both offspring. I rather like her too, which helps.

On Wednesday they chose a family favourite, Rattletrap Car. As always it was an interactive story read, with the children reading different parts, Big playing Junie and Small Jakie, then Big morphing to be the baby as she saves the day. I don’t actually need the book to read the story as it were, we’ve read it so many times, I can recite it from memory, and I still like it. Got to be the measure of a good book.

Tonight it was a rescued ex library book, The Crooked Apple Tree. It’s a lovely book, all about children playing through the year, and somehow it makes me think of the Beans, don’t know why 😉 (Though it could be the idea of parental picture taking and then presenting the children a book of their pictures, sounds a very Beany thing to do.) Small then proceeded to tell me how to spell ‘tree’ and ‘apple’ (which might be the first time he’s spelled out something longer than one syllable actually, coo another first).