Friday, September 11, 2009
Aaron and I spend a lot of time reading. He will drop anything he's doing if I say "Lets read a story". I am definitely as interested in sharing the books with him as he is interested in listening.
Unfortunately, reading aloud makes me yawn uncontrollably. I'm neither bored nor tired but the yawns just keep coming. Some days, like today, its worse than others. I've tried sitting by the door, near a fan, on a proper chair, on the floor - EVERYWHERE. Perhaps its because reading automatically causes a person to exhale more than inhale. I've tried taking a deep breath after each sentence but I'm still yawning. And, it breaks up the story. So now, I basically try to just read through the yawns.
How do those people who read audio books do it? I've been Googling this but no answers so far. And, it seems that many other moms experience it too. So far, Aaron doesn't seem to mind or think that I'm disinterested in reading. I just tell him that I need breaks after every story.
While there are no solutions for me yet, I did come across some interesting trivia on yawning from Howstuffworks:
- The average yawn lasts about six seconds.
- Your heart rate can rise as much as 30 percent during a yawn.
- 55 percent of people will yawn within five minutes of seeing someone else yawn.
- Blind people yawn more after hearing an audio tape of people yawning.
- Reading about yawning will make you yawn. (Have you yawned yet?)
- Olympic athletes often yawn before competition.
- In humans, the earliest occurrence of a yawn happens at about 11 weeks after conception - that's BEFORE the baby is born!
- Yawns become contagious to people between the first and second years of life. (I read in a separate link that contagious yawning may have something to do with empathy so maybe thats why its only contagious after we have a year of experience.)
*yawn* *yawn* *yawn*
Labels: trivia
Several times.
This months Discover magazine has a good article that includes this subject. (Just got it today, go figure)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070621161826.htm
I used to read a lot to our boys too but I cant remember yawning ;)