Bathtub Reading

Owen really enjoys bath time. Lately he will linger in there and "wim" (swim) for a LONG time. Tonight, Abram read to us from The Hobbit, and then Owen read to us from Tub-a-Tub.
Well. . . sort-of. . .

The past few nights when he asked us to read it, he would chime in:
Mama: Tub-a-Tub. Cat splashes in a bubbly tub-a-tub-tub.
Owen: bubbles! tub-tub-tub
Mama: Dog dries his ears -
Owen: Rub rub.
Mama: Yes, rub-a-rub rub. Turle
Owen: Ha, ha, ha.
Mama: Yes, Turtle plays splish splash, Ha, ha, ha.
Owen: Ha, ha, ha.
Mama: Bird sings -
Owen: La, la, la.
Mama: Bird sings in the shower, La, la, la. Rabbit waves goodnight -
Owen: Night, night! (waving)
Mama: Ta-dah!
Owen: Dah-dah!

Tonight he flipped open the page where bird sings in the shower and sang, "La, la, la!" He enjoyed going through the pages and saying the repetitive phrases. Memorizing books is an early step toward reading, and while Owen has plenty of time to learn to read, I'm so excited to see the process begin.
He has started to show how much he understands books. He has gone from repeating a word from the text here and there to telling us about the pictures, pointing out small details, and using different words for the ideas in the text. We have read "Wild" (Where the Wild Things Are) about a bijillion times in the last week. Yesterday, Owen looked at Max's dinner that was still hot and said "soup.hungry." It's just so fascinating to be able to see his wheels turning.