Reading no-no

I'm just dying for my son to start reading. Since this is the primary emphasis of Kindergarten these days, reading with your child at night is highly-encouraged. No problem, I think. We read all the time. Except when I'm at a meeting. Or we're late getting home. Okay. We're good at it-- you'll have to trust me.

My son has a long attention span, so we've been reading some "chapter" books. By we, I mean me. He does follow along and read the "popcorn" words, when I remember to let him. Sometimes he even reminds me, as in "Mom, 'it' is a popcorn word. I can do that. And I. I can do that too."

When he was home sick, we were reading a Magic Tree House book. We've just started those, thanks to some advice from a friend/kindergarten teacher we know. He really seems to like them, but they do have very few pictures, which took some getting used to. We were getting towards the climax of the book, and I was reading quite fast, which I am prone to do, and suddenly:

"MOM! You stopped reading! You're reading to yourself and not to me!!"

Oops. I wanted to say something like, "Well, if you'd read yourself, you wouldn't have this problem," but that doesn't seem very nice. So I apologized and went back to where I left off (about half a page) and started again. I think it really hurt his feelings that I would read without him, but I honestly didn't realize I had stopped reading aloud.

We just got the October book list, so I guess we'll get lots of practice.