Little bear likes counting

Little bear has his favourite books. One of them is a board book with numbers. Little bear is far too advanced for it, but he likes it and that is what matters. So at bedtime, as one of his two stories, I will solemnly read, 'One bouncy ball, two woolly gloves...'

However last time little bear was insisting that he read it himself, and he has memorised all the words. But he didn't just read the 'Twenty Cuddly Teddy Bears'. He counted them from one to twenty, just to check that the book wasn't cheating.

The highlight for me was when he got to the page with one hundred colourful flowers. He started off in his normal voice, 'one, two, three...' and then he got a bit higher so that he sounded a little falsetto, 'thirteen, fourteen, fifteen....' Then his voice was climbing higher and evil cat was looking a bit grumpy (her eyesight may be going but she can still hear her food cupboard door opening two floors away). His voice was still climbing, 'twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three...' and I imagined that dogs would be putting their paws over their ears. As he got into the thirties the pitch of his voice was climbing even higher into the range of special effects and I was imagining bats falling out of the sky. Then, as he hit 'thirty-eight' his voice suddenly dropped several octaves. Then, to my amusement, his pitch started going up again. He got to the squeak the second time around 'seventy-eight' and was still mid range when he hit one hundred.

I'm looking forward to hearing it again.