Warning: Some Behavior May Be Hereditary

One of the many joys of parenthood (and I’m very tempted to write ‘joys’ and be all sarcastic here, but I’m trying not to because it’s borderline endearing) is noticing eerily familiar behavior in one’s offspring.  Of course, these manifest to various degrees, but I think Finnur and I both agree that Anna takes a lot after me, and Bjarki is very much Finnur’s son.

The latest manifestation of Anna being a mini-Hrefna: Irrational behavior when it comes to reading books, particularly when they get exciting.

You see, late yesterday afternoon, Anna’s class and parents (not me though) went on a walking excursion in the dark with flash-lights.  They drank hot chocolate, and had cookies, and sure enough, the excessive sugar gave Anna both a head and stomach ache shortly after dinner.

She was all ready to go to sleep super early when I foolishly grabbed the (English) Harry Potter 3 book out of habit and read her one page – after which she was going to right to sleep.  (I’ve been reading her one page and then she reads a few more before nodding off.)

Out of all the pages in the darn book (which is probably my favorite of all the HP books), I happened to read the one where Sirius meets the kids for the first time.   Gaaah!

And sure enough, the head and stomach aches magically disappeared, and Anna read for almost an hour more before finally nodding off.

But that’s not really the irrational behavior.

Uh, uh, no, not at all.

The irrational part came this morning when instead of finding a fast-asleep-Anna at shortly past 7 am, her door was closed, the light was on, she was wide awake in her room, all giddily excited, and she confessed she’d been reading!  Apparently she’d woken up at 6 am to go to the bathroom, and then she “just couldn’t fall asleep again” so she picked up the Harry Potter book and continued reading…

Yeah.  I’ve done that.  Sssshhhh….