Who Wants to Hear a Story?

I have this recurring dream that I’m going to sit down and read a book to all of my children at the same time.  It’s a nice dream.  Usually there is a sofa involved, and everybody is awake.  It could be a picture book or a volume of original Pooh stories.  At some point everybody giggles at once – except the baby, who isn’t crying.  That’s the dream version.  The real life version of me trying to read to my children as a pack is more like this. 

“Who wants to hear a story?”

Buttercup and Bubba come running.  Bubba drags Blanket with him.  The Baby smiles.  I open the book, read the first page, notice an odor.  We get up, change Bubba’s pants, get The Baby back out of his bouncer, sit down again.  I read the second page.  The Baby starts screaming – he thought it was meal time, even though he just ate an hour ago.  I hand the book over to Buttercup and get The Baby ready to nurse.  Bubba has forgotten the book.  He has Blanket draped over his head while he runs around the room yelling “Bubba Ghost!  Bubba Ghost!”  Buttercup has looked three pages ahead.  I review the first two pages, call Bubba back.  He jumps on the sofa, The Baby loses his latch.  Page three, Bubba looks at the pictures while Buttercup interrupts me every other line to point out a word she recognizes on page four.  Page five, Bubba’s attention span is gone, and so is he.  The Baby spits up all over Buttercup’s leg, she wipes it on the sofa, goes to change.  I get a towel, clean the sofa, settle back with The Baby and Buttercup, ignore the banging sound in Bubba’s room.  Review page . . . what page were we on?  Page six, Bubba is back.  He grabs the book and tosses it on the rug, laughs like a crazy person, goes to time out.  Page seven, baby is crying for no discernable reason except that maybe he is reading my mind.  Page eight, I suggest to Buttercup that we finish when the boys are in bed later.  Page nine and forward go into the black hole of Naptime when everything is planned and nothing actually gets done. 

Maybe one day, when my children are in their thirties, they’ll indulge me in sitting down and listening to me read aloud for a few minutes without interruption.  Of course, by then maybe we’ll have another generation of babies making a mess of story time. 

And then I’ll be doubly blessed.