Moo, Baa, La La La . . . and book storage for Baby

I chose Moo, Baa, La La La by Sandra Boynton to share for Feed Me Books Friday, because it is a board book that Susie has suddenly decided she loves. A friend gave me this book at a baby shower, saying it was a fave for her kiddos, and I expected Susie to be into it, too. It took her a while to warm up, I must say. I guess the illustrations weren't super appealing for a very young baby (she seemed to be more into the really bright, colorful ones, and things with real pictures). Now she LOVES it! It's the perfect length for her, and it rhymes and is funny. I do the animal sounds nice and loud. I remember Sandra Boynton being a big favorite at Blue Kangaroo Books, a children's bookstore in Illinois (where I had the VERY fun privilege of working!). I see how catchy she is when you are reading her out loud, over and over. I'd really rather read this book 4 times straight than just a book naming the animals on each page (we read those, too). If you aren't already a Sandra Boynton fan, check her out!

Here is a picture of Susie looking at this book outside the other day. I had this stroke of genius to take a cardboard box and throw some "outside stuff" in it for her to explore. I mostly put in board books. We don't have a real yard or any sort of garage or driveway. We live in an apartment, which has a nice sliding door and bit of grassiness for us to explore outside it. I like to take Sus out to get a bit of outdoor time every day, and unless I haul out a blanket, I'm just putting the books right on the ground. Empty box -- PERFECT for keeping stuff off the grass, and adds to the fun for her dumping it out. I love the way she imitates me pointing at the pictures. Stepping stones to reading!

I also came up with a way to store her board books so they are always available to her! I got these CHEAP little baskets with liners and filled them up. Now, in the picture, I've got them all tidy, but the cool thing is that I can just seriously toss the books in and they look fine. And since it was a set of 2, I can put them in different rooms. I was thinking that as she gets older, and I start getting out more of her paper page books, I can rotate them out of the baskets so there are "new" books for her to look at! This has been a big improvement over the bottom shelf I had initially given her. It was just way too confusing to keep the books she CAN have right underneath Daddy's textbooks, which are "no touch". It's pretty funny when she crawls under her jumpy and looks at her books. It's like a little house to read in!