Madeleine reads

Madeleine is big on reading to herself lately, which essentially means she flips through various books pointing at things and reciting random words she knows (not necessarily correlated with the pictures she's pointing at.) While we were at Julia's gymnastics class, Madeleine spent some time looking through a pile of books they have at the movement center, and the whole activity went something like this:

MADELEINE: (flipping through a book) Goo goo ga ga! Goo goo ga ga! Backpack, backpack! Map! I'm Map! (discards book, picks up another one.) Daddy, Jouwee, Daddy, Jouwee, Daddy, Jouwee, Daddy. (discards that book, picks up another.) Train. Train. Chu chu choo choo. Chu chu choo choo. Chu chu choo choo. (Tosses that book aside, picks up another.) Is a nose. Dat dit nose. As at a nose. Dis a nose. Atzat as a nose.

This is vastly preferable to her other reading habit, which is to toddle towards me exclaiming "MAAAma?" as she holds out a book towards me. She then plops in my lap with the book and I begin reading to her. As soon as I'm on the last page, she again implores, "MAAAAma?" and flips the book back to the first page. This seemingly has no stopping point, at least in her mind. If I try to put the book down after the umpteenth reading, she literally pries open my fist with her fingers and shoves the book back into my hand, all the while pleading, "MAAAAma?" These reading sessions generally always end in tears when I finally tell her "All done book," and get up and start doing something else. Maybe if I were reading the words more like she does, she would be okay with just one read through. "Daddy, Jouwee, Daddy, Jouwee, chu chu choo choo, is a nose, Backpack." BAM! Done - book tossed aside, moving on...