T has really gotten into storytelling. And I don’t mean, “I was jumping on my bed and fell down, the end.” No, I mean fairly elaborate and quite funny, imaginative tales of lore.

Much of what T spins his yarns around centers around a plot device that he saw in a recent movie. For example, lately a lot of folks wind up being thrown away in garbage trucks – that’s a Toy Story 3 reference there for those who have not been over-exposed.  But then those folks miraculously turn into astronauts who are going to restaurants, on the moon, where they serve wine, noodles, and poopy.

Yeah, like I said, imaginative. For a 3-year-old, that is…

I marveled last week (https://realmomtime.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/last-day-of-school/) about just how much T grew up this past year, but it really shows up big time in his speech. Hard to think that just about a year ago, T graduated a group-setting speech therapy program due to minor speech delays, and yet now he’s stringing together these crazy but highly amusing and eloquent (if not mature) soliloquies.

I always hear from other moms and of course “the experts” that kids who are quick to tell tall tales learn this mostly from being read to and spoken to – like a person, not the baby talk stuff – from a very young age. Believe it or not, I began reading T bedtime stories when he was just 3 months old; that was about the time I finally had gotten a night of sleep (5 hours being considered a night’s sleep for moms of infants, remember that one? ha) and could finally muster an iota of energy to attempt a bedtime routine. Since I always knew bedtime stories would be a part of that routine, I thought why not read a few board books to him while he gets his bedtime feeding. Before that age (and in utero), I think we just read to him from whatever we were reading at the time (lots of Real Simple and Lucky magazine from me and Jim Cramer financial books by C, if I am recalling 3+ years ago correctly). Our establishing that reading pattern early on definitely cemented a bedtime cornerstone, as now I can say with conviction that T eagerly awaits the 15-20 minutes of bedtime reading he and I do nightly after his bath with Daddy. Yay for books!

Once a month I usually allow T to pick a book or two from the Scholastic book club fliers distributed at school to supplement his existing and overflowing library. We order online, so the school also gets a free book every time we order; that to me is worth the extra dollar or two per book I might be paying (the convenience also just works for me really). Lately he’s been fixated on the “Mater Tall Tales” series, which are hard-bound books centered on Mater (Cars – the movies – character) telling stories about his imaginative adventures, akin to the plot lines of the animated television series of the same name (which we’ve never actually seen and I just learned about myself, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cars_Toons:_Mater%27s_Tall_Tales). There are three stories in each book, which is perfect due to the length of each story running about five minutes reading time. Three stories at five minutes a pop makes for 15 minutes total reading time. So T then can have “the whole book” without any fight – and with that, three cheers for that battle being eliminated, especially at bedtime!