Library Visit

I know this is going to shock some people, but I have to say it. This is one of the last times I took Sydney to the library:


I know, I know. It seems like with my love of books, I would be taking her all the time, right? The truth is, though, that in my experience, listening to new books (as opposed to old favorites) is something a child has to develop a skill for. Sydney is slow to accept a new book and often will only listen to a page or two before losing interest, and even if she does listen to the new book, she won't listen to another new book. Having made the leap to opening herself up for a new story, she needs to retreat back to the familiar afterwards. Putting this together, the library is really a place to go to find all of the books we already have at home.

Also, I have a terrible time returning library materials and after Jeremy pays the five dollar fine for the seven dollar book, he gets a little irritated with me.

Anyway, Sydney is getting older, and I thought it was time to go back to the library. Not that she is completely ready for the sit and listen to one new story after another experience, but that she is ready to be taught library behavior, and she is most assuredly ready to learn the love of the library.

This is the kids' section of our library (part of it anyway, the puzzle section and the big open area Sydney used to crawl around are elsewhere).

Sydney did spend a lot of our library visit playing in that tent and in the awesome jeep in the background. I am aware, having librarian friends, that these spaces were probably thought of more as cool places to sit and hunker down with a good book and less of a playground. I also know that librarians who work in children's libraries are either people who love children's books, or people who love children and books and the former will be irritated by anything my daughter does and the latter will understand my purpose in bringing her to the library to play.

Because I do want her to learn to love the library, and I figure if my earliest library memories are the blocks with the dinosaurs I played with while waiting for my mom to pick out books, and I turned into a bibliophile, then maybe Sydney's earliest library experiences can be riding the jeep, zipping and unzipping the tent, and playing with the other cool toys there. (Especially since she did all of these things quietly, and that was the other goal, to learn the use of a library voice.)

She also played with the bead roller coaster thingamajig.

And she had a lot of fun with all of the puzzles in the puzzle section. In fact, this is where we finally settled and spent the rest of our time. She has done all of the puzzles at our house dozens of times, so it was nice to see new ones.

As predicted, we only read one book, although she did pull out some others to look at the pictures, but she wouldn't let me actually read them to her. There is a bin with board books for kids to look through and Sydney had wandered over to it and kept saying, "That's scared," which really means "that's scary to me," and acting like she was seeing a spider or something. Then she would add, "that duck's scared," and I couldn't figure out how in the world a duck could be scary. Finally, in a moment I can only describe as extreme braverism, she gingerly picked up this board book by the corner and brought it to me saying, "I wanna read the scared book."

When I saw the cover, I understood exactly what she had been talking about. That is one scary duck. Why in the world would someone make a board book with a creepy eagle on the cover? But Sydney wanted to face her fears and had me read it through three or four times. Brave girl.

And, of course, there is a fountain outside the library, so we brought the penguin penny purse and threw pennies in the water, to make a splash.

Finally, this is one of the many, many reasons I love my daughter. Look at her knees. Did you think of a library as a place where a little girl could get this filthy?