Library Day

In our house, Monday is Speech Therapist day, Tuesday is Different Speech Therapist day, and Wednesday is Library Day. Now that winter is here and Mother Nature covers the ground in snow while I struggle to cover tiny feet with socks, we don’t leave the house much. Some Wednesdays, the only time we leave the house, and therefore the only time the kids do anything blog worthy, is when we go to the library.

I try to find other things to blog about to avoid turning Thursday into Library Blog Post Day. Yesterday, though, the kids surprised me by acting in a way that was so unexpected, so uncharacteristic, so shocking, that I had to share it.

Library Day is the day when I have to wake everyone on time and speed them through breakfast so we can make it out the door by 10am. Story time at the library starts at 10:15, and we don’t want to miss the opening song. Story time features stories,* songs, and rhymes led by an instructor while about two dozen toddlers sit attentively around her.

My three children are not in that group. My three children run around the room generally ignoring the stories while occasionally returning for the rhymes and songs. The boys used to sit attentively, but then they developed the ability to run. I like bringing the kids to story time for the socialization in the hope that by exposing them to other children, they’ll pick up the ability to sit attentively. So far, they only thing they’ve picked up are germs, which may be the origin of their current cold.

Abbie rarely wanders far. She tends to run circles around me, keeping her back to the instructor as much as possible, and looking for ways to climb on my back. She’ll climb down for the rhymes and songs, but she rarely pays attention to the book.

The boys wander far, but always with a purpose. The room’s door has a latch at their level, and they love playing with it, flapping it up and down to hear it click. I sit close to the toddler group, and the boys spend most of the time running back to the door. I hate when they do that partially because the clicking is annoying. It’s no more annoying than the two dozen jabbering children, so mostly I hate them sitting there because someone could open the door and not notice a child sitting 18-inches off the ground as they stride into the room.

I spend my time bouncing Abbie, trying to encourage her to notice the book and the good children, and setting her down in time to catch the boys as they run out of arm’s length. I then sit them on the other side of my body, placing myself between them and the door so they’ll have to take the long way around to return to the latch.

That’s what I was doing yesterday. Bounce. Grab. Reposition. Grab. Bounce. Reposition with one hand while grabbing with the other. The leader led us through a rhyme, and my three children decided to sit attentively watching. When she opened up another story, I expected to return to my repositioning dance, but everyone remained seated. All three children stared directly at the book, and Abbie even interacted by pointing out some things in the story, like the cat that she repeatedly announced with “ihh-eee.” After a minute, she was hanging on my back, but still looking at the book.

I took my minute break to look around the room. I saw a couple dozen toddlers fidgeting while struggling to stay seated. I saw other parents fighting with their children to make them pay attention. I saw my children, who for a brief yet glorious couple of minutes were the best behaved in the room.

Then Ian made a break for the door. I returned to the repositioning dance while gaining optimism that my kids are learning, and maybe, just maybe, getting something from story time besides colds.

* Duh