The Christmas Book

I took the boys to the Bookstore. Jamie came with me, so I had someone to watch then play with the toy train they keep while I shopped for what I was shopping for. That just happened to include a couple of small Holiday Books for the boys to have right away. One of them was Merry Christmas Maisy!, which is a lift-the-flap book featuring Maisy. (I looked it up after the Thomas the TANK Engine faux-pas yesterday. Sheesh! What a mistake!)

Anyway, I did give Jamie a turn to browse as I attempted to fuel some appreciation for books and the wonders they hold. I did that by pointing out books I thought Nicholas might find interesting. THIS is where alarm bells should be sounding. It's one thing to point oout all the wonderful books at a Library where you can then take them home, and quite another in a Book Store where each book is fabulously overpriced. Especially when the pointee is 2 years old, and already overstimulated.

What happened was, I pointed out a Wiggles Book. "Oh, Look! A Wiggles book!" and NIck reached out and touched the Wiggles book. The he looked next to it and found a Sesame Street Book. And he picked it up. And then Jamie came back and I said "Time to go. Put the book back and let's check out." And then tiny explosions took place inside Nick's skull, cdausing him to scream as though his brain were going to shoot out his eye sockets. His face turned bright red and he started screaming.

"Nick!" I said. "Look, we don't need that book. I have this Maisy book for you!" And Nick loooked at the Maisy book and shouted "PUT IT BACK!!!!!!" And I stood there like the dumb adult I am and said "Don't you WANT the Maisy Book?" and Nick yelled "PUT IT BACK!" ANd I realize that at this point I should have just put all his books back and walked out of the store, but I was afraid he was going to throw up, which he's been doing more and more during fits lately, and the bookstore is not a good place for that, so I was only thinking about getting him to stop crying to avoid puke situation A. "OK!" I said. "We can take the Sesame Street book, but we'll take the Maisy Book, too!" "NOOOOOOOOO!" he screamed! He just didn't want that Maisy book anywhere NEAR us.

I managed to calm him down, and he sat in the stroller as we checked out. Jamie did most of it. And we got into the car... and I'll just have you know that We've read that Maisy book at least twice a day ever since. I have trouble getting through it because Nick loves it so much, and on page 2 she goes to the store and her tiny wallet is a tiny flap, and you open it and there are tiny coins, and much of the time, once we get to that page, Nick insists on holding the book and openeing and closing the wallet and won't let me turn the page...

So there you go.