Hugless Douglas

Finn has always liked books from a very early age. But the first book that he really started to interact with (point at the pictures, laugh at parts of the story, etc) was a book called Hugless Douglas which was given to him by my friend and former employer in Bozeman, Bill Bradley and his family.
I thought this deeper interest in books would extend to all books, and it has in many ways, but not to the same level as with Hugless Douglas. It has become his absolute favorite. He requests (maybe "demands" is a better word) that we read it every night at the exclusion of all other stories. When Ben and I have tried to sneak a different book in, Finn will get up out of bed, find Hugless Douglas and plop it down on top of whatever story we are trying to read.
His devotion to this book has recently reached new heights. Lately, when he wakes up from a nap, he will come out into the living room clutching this book. When he wakes up at 5:30 in the morning he somehow finds it in the total darkness of his room, brings it into bed and sets it, not very gently, on my face.  This morning when he woke up, he couldn't find Hugless Douglas (because he had left it in Mommy and Daddy's room last night) and so he rummaged through his book pile until he found the book jacket for Hugless Douglas and brought that to me to read. Fortunately(?), since I now read this book to him 3-4 times a day I have the gist of it memorized so that I can recite some version of it to him, even at 5:30 in the morning, when I am nowhere near being awake and the book is being pressed into my face.

UPDATE: Ben has started asking Finn at the end of the book "Who does Douglas hug?" (the answer is his Mommy). At first Finn wouldn't say anything, but the past couple of times Finn has turned to Ben and whispered "Dadda." Yet another example of how this kid is Daddy's boy all the way!