Telling a story, from my own words

I should not be allowed to paraphrase when reading children's books.  I simply should not.  But I can't help it sometimes.  Aubrey has a lot of books.  She has two whole shelves full of them, but only a handful of them are "board books," you know, the kind she won't completely destroy and rip apart into shreds?  Well, no, I take that back....when we did take her up to my parent's house once, she had eaten off the entire corner of the cardboard "Oh the Thinks You Can Think" book.  It's all-natural, I suppose, minus the color on the cardboard.  Anyway....

 

 

I read the same books ALL the time.  Some of them are longer than others, and sometimes she'll discover a new one and will just want me to read that all the time.  Enter...The Children's Bible.  We got it from friends of ours for a baptism gift.  It is super cute, great pictures and very simplistic story line.   I mean it goes Old and New Testament in like 12 pages.   I think you can see where I'm going with this, those of you who know me all too well....

 

 

The Children's Bible is lengthy.  Aubrey has no patience.  Mommy has read it a LOT, or tried to read all of it before Aubrey impatiently turns the page.  (I still think there's something to that whole dumping her in the holy water thing.)  So the other day, out of sheer exhaustion and after already reading it TWICE before, I paraphrased.

 

 

"Ok, so Aubrey, God created the earth, and here we have Adam and Eve....and they look all happy here but they are about to sin.  Well, Eve does first.  And that's why you get a period."

 

Flip to second page....

 

"Okay, so these people really messed up so God wanted to just wipe the slate clean and said 'Hey Noah, build this boat.' and he did.   And Noah and his wife and 2 of every animal went on it and there was this big flood.  But they were heterosexual animals, Aubrey, note that.  Heterosexual.  (I say out of sarcasm...no I am not homophobic.)"

 

 

Third page - "See that baby in the basket there?  That's Moses.  He's this world's very first CHINS.  Someone just put him in a river, and see that princess?  She saves him and then....well...then, Moses happened."  (At this point T is laughing.)

 

 

"Okay, so David was a shepherd and there are his sheep.  See?  Sheep?  Sheep go 'baaaa?'"

 

 

"Daniel is in the lion's den, and it looks all happy in there, but what you don't see is that he was put in there to die.  You see those bones?  Those are human bones, Aubrey.  This book paints way too rosy of a picture..."

 

 

It goes on...she loved the picture of Baby Jesus, and I loved explaining that to her.  We get to the page of Jesus in the temple when he was 12 years old.  "Ok, so Aubrey, you don't get to just leave your parents and wander off without telling me where you are going.  Jesus scared his mom and step-dad.  I don't care who your father is, you don't get to go around scaring your mother like that." 

 

 

I'm going to hell.  For blasphemy.  Just wanted to put that out there.