Talk about surprising me!

So I knew Trevor was reading a little bit. And I know that the kid has a wonderful memory. But I also know that he loves the time when we read to him. There have been plenty of times where I stop mid-sentence and ask him to finish the line. Most of the time he doesn't even want to do that.

But tonight, he gave me a treat. He said he wanted to show me how he knew how to read. He had picked the story, "The Night Before Christmas". I was expecting that he would get to the more boring parts and either get stuck or get bored and hand the book off to me. But he got through it. He even tried to get me to finish some lines....especially naming a few of the reindeer. "Good job mom!" There were a few times he lost his spot, and then had to really read the words to get back to where he was. So while I know a lot of the story is pure memorization, there were a lot of elements of reading there.

After finishing the story, I really couldn't hide my surprise. I told him that he did a really good job, but he wasn't hearing it. He wanted to get to the next story, which was "Stories of Santa Claus" Actually, it was the words of Up on the Housetop and Jolly Old St. Nicholas put to illustrations. However, every time I read the stories he makes me sing the songs because he has seen that the first pages have the music for the song. So I requested the same thing from him. It is a much easier book in terms of number of words and ease of remembering them. But he still had a good time while I danced along to his singing.

And for the grand finale....he even went and read the entire "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". Now while this book takes me about 15 minutes to read, I thought there was no way he was getting through it. Especially after the other two books. But he did it. The. Entire. Thing. And yes, he loves the book. We read it every night since I took them out at the beginning of the month. And he has seen both the live-action film and the cartoon twice already. But again, that is a LONG book for a kid to memorize and have the patience to read. I think he might have mistaken a handful of words the entire thing. He did lose his place a few times again, but just re-read where he was and went right back to it.

After he was done, I tried my best to make sure he felt as proud of himself as I was for him. Now is it bad of me to not want to try to push him into reading every night? I'm not even close to ready to give up reading to him. So I don't want to give him that idea. I know it won't be any time soon, but I really think I'm not going to try to push it up any more than I have to.