Storytelling: Reading Out Loud

One thing I've recently started doing, as in the last week, is reading a story every night with my head resting against Veronica's midsection. 

I think at this point we have all heard the various stories about playing music for or talking to the baby-to-be, that it is a great thing or a good thing or does nothing at all. For me, however, it comes down to three basic concepts:

1. It's an excuse to spend a little relatively quiet time with my wife every evening. This cannot be overlooked.
2. It is my current understanding that hearing and feeling the voices of the parents can be a soothing thing for a baby and get them used to those voices.
3. It is helping the idea that there is a little person in there, that I'm going to be taking care of and humming and reading to a little kid sometime in the not-to-distant future.

So reading it is.

Right now I am working my way through Grimm's Fairy Tales with a little bit of Aesop's Fables thrown in for flavor every so often; it's stories I might actually be reading to the kid someday, and it's material that I've wanted to take a closer look at myself for a while now. I remain unsurprised but pleased by the casual way that light-hearted adventures go hand-in-hand with murder, mayhem, and randomly mystic (mis)fortune in these tales.

I'm having fun, Veronica (the wife, in her wisdom, will be going by her actual name) is having fun, and we hope that the little one is having fun.