I had been so careful about keeping things out of his crib — no blankets or stuffed animals — but I hadn't thought of giving him access to books. That night, I gathered a stack of his favourite books. Books with hard pages he could roughly flip through without tearing them to shreds were ideal. I set them on a pouf and dragged it next to his crib.
The next morning, I woke to the sound of a fire alarm ringing, followed by a dog barking, and immediately smiled. I'd accidentally included one of those interactive sound books, this one about a brave little fire truck and his Dalmatian sidekick. I glanced at the monitor on my nightstand and could see that he had pulled several books into his crib and was flipping through them happily. I turned over onto my side and dozed until my alarm went off. As I threw on my robe and headed to his room, I could tell by the sounds he was making which book he was thumbing through.