Kindles and Babies

I've been reading a lot lately.  I've read more books in the last six weeks than I've read in the last six months.  When you have to spend an hour or more rocking your baby to get her to go to sleep (she only sleeps for thirty minutes before she needs to be rocked again), there's not much to do other than read.  Which I'm perfectly happy with because I love reading and don't mind hiding from the children under the guise of putting the baby to bed.  One evening Brandon had to come over after blessing the food and ask me if next time I could please put the book away during the prayer?

I checked five or six books out from the library in preparation for Eleanor's birth, both paper books and on the kindle.  After having spent some serious time reading in both formats, I have to confess that I have a definite preference for the kindle.  I know that since I love books and have snotty preferences about wooden toys with no batteries and synthetic fabrics, I should really prefer a paper book to its shoddy electronic version.  After all, reading a book is a tactile experience with the feel of the paper under your fingers and the weight in your hand and the specific type font that has a little blurb about it in the back of the book.  And who doesn't like bookshelves as interior decorating accent?  Books are real and e-books are just electronic imitations of the real thing.

But when you've been rocking a baby for an hour and she is in that state of perfect stillness with her eyes glazing over and eyelids imperceptibly drifting ever so slowly down and you've reached the end of the page, you can't just reach over and turn the page on that tangible, heavy, paper book with the carefully chosen type font.  Because then the eyelids would snap back up and your baby will stare around wildly in that way that spells at least thirty more minutes of rocking while the children are busily dumping out every single container of drawing supplies on the floor and tipping glasses of water over them.  So you don't.  And you are stuck reading "Adelaide opened the door to find..." for the next ten minutes while you pray to all of the pagan gods that those eyelids will just stay shut so you can administer some serious hurts to the mess-makers before starting in on the clean-up.  After seeing who was waiting for Adelaide.

And suddenly type font isn't nearly as important as finding out who was waiting on the other side of the door for Adelaide.  Was it her lover?  Her wicked father?  Her long-lost mother?  Ten minutes is an incredibly long time when you're waiting for resolution.  But if you had a kindle, all it would take to answer the burning question would but just one little tap of the finger and the story would continue without any eyelids opening or babies stirring (although it still wouldn't stop the crayon deluge) and you could enjoy blissful escape from everyday life until the baby was well and truly asleep.

So yes, I have abandoned my snobberies and will only read books on my kindle, at least until the baby learns to put herself to sleep.  Then I might reconsider paper books.  Maybe.