Andrew got up early this morning. He gets up early almost every morning. This morning he was up and he was upset that he couldn’t go downstairs at 5:45am. He woke us all up. He woke Eva up. But she took it upon herself to calm him down. She went into his room and picked out the Curious George book of stories that we have and she read to Andrew.

I don’t write much about making childhood magical, or how to be raising a reader or anything like that. I usually just write about things matter-of-fact-ly. I’m a meat and potatoes guy, I don’t wax poetic or get whimsical. What I saw and captured in the moment above was my kids having a childhood. They didn’t get out the tablets or anything like that. Believe me, we have plenty of those and the kids know how to work them all. What my daughter turned to in this moment was a book. And Andrew sat in rapt attention to every word that she read. So, I guess that by reading to her almost nightly, We’re also reading to Andrew nightly, Eva has an appreciation for reading and she is ready to share that with her brother. Something magical about that, in my eyes.

Now, on a more pragmatic level, the kids went through all of their Halloween candy, and our Trick or Treater leftovers and made charts and lists of all of it. Whether this was to deter their parents from pilfering their candy haul or just to have an inventory, it is unclear. However, the kids knew what they got and they are watching their stashes like hawks.