Never Read to Your Children

Well...ok, maybe not ever...but you should avoid Calvin and Hobbes at all cost! Lately, Jonathon and James have been enjoying looking at Calvin and Hobbes comic books. Most of the time they don't know what the words in the pictures say, but the pictures are enough to occasionally make them laugh- the sign of an excellent illustrator! When they don't understand what's going on, or they know it's a REALLY good one, they beg, plead, and groan for someone who is literate to explain the sequence of events.

So, I have occasionally induldged in a few stories, and much to their delight, one night I read C&H for and hour straight! All was well until they became too familiar with the stories. Then comes the reenactments...

Jonathon stealthily creeps up on the unsuspecting mother: "I"M HOME!!!!" He yells in her ear! And then cackles gleefully knowing that he just scared about three years out of her!

Or, James says: *Blow, blow blow* "I'm blowing up my balloon (imaginary)." *Blow, blow, blow* "AH!!!! I blew up my head instead!"

Jonathon with playdough in Sunday School: "Look, Mama! I'm making little snowmen!" (Calvin makes minature snowmen and then pretends to be a giant dinasaur and stomps the villagers to smithereens!) Then Jonathon, without warning, crushed them all flat with his fist.

So, I'm waiting for the time that he tells me that his stuffed dog tied him to the chair, or that it was the dog that wanted food in the middle of the night, or he decides to run the water in the bathroom, but not actually take a bath. Perhaps Calvin and Hobbes should be put away until the ideas in the books are more just funny and not necessarily GREAT ideas!