Book!

As my son becomes more of a toddler and less of a baby, he of course has become more expressive, and more definite about what he wants.

There I am sitting on the couch, when my son walks up to me, small board book in hand, and says "Book!" and presents me with the book, climbing up onto the couch and looking at me expectantly.  I give him a smile and read him the book.  When I get to the end I place the book between us, he picks it up, looks up at me and again, hands me the book.  "Book!" I scan our general area and note that all the rest of his books are on the other side of the room, so I smile and read the same book to him again.  We get to the end of the 8 page story and before I can put the book down his hands are on it pressing it back toward me.  "Book!"  I can see he's not going to let me put it down.  So I read it yet again, while my son beams at me.

After reading and rereading this book (an unreasonable number of times) I take a chance.  I step up from the couch, to my son's immediate protests, cross the room and grab a hand full of board books and return to my now distraught son.  As soon as I sit on the couch, books in hand, his face brightens.  Now we have a small stack of books that I can, and do read to him, cycling through the stack three times.  Before he notices that there are perfectly nice toys he could be playing with.  And I am relieved of my book reading duty.

So not only would I recommend having copious amounts of baby friendly books in your house, but have small piles set up anywhere you might stop to rest so that you always have some books on hand.  How you get these books is irrelevant.  You could buy them or get someone else to buy them for you (though they are not cheap for what you get) or you could borrow them from your local library.

Because lets face it, it's hard to be content reading the same small book on repeat ad infinitum.  I got bored anyway, and it seems likely that most adults would too.