A 2-Year-Old's Visit to the Library

Yesterday I took my older daughter to a birthday party (which I will talk more about in a future post -- her birthday is coming up, so it's party planning time again!), and I had find something to do to entertain my little 2-year-old for 90 minutes. Enter the library -- it was conveniently located near the birthday party, and I needed to pick up some books. My little one had never been there before, and this is a particularly nice library in the town next to ours. We were on a quest to find some of the "Nancy Drew Clue Crew" books for my soon-to-be 8-year-old, and my little one and I marched in on a mission. She was holding my hand and chanting, "Have to find Nancy Drew!" over and over -- until it came time to actually LOOK for the books -- at that point, she had lost interest. In this library, there is a cute little bridge to walk over to enter the children's section (of course you don't need to walk over the bridge, but we did). We walked over the bridge and started looking for the books, and while I was searching, my little girlie was pulling a few books off of the shelves -- so then I also had to try and restock the shelves!

We grabbed a few books -- as quickly as possible! -- and then made our way over to the "play area". We looked at a few board books that interested her, and then headed over to the big table with all of the building blocks. That held our attention for quite some time! We had a lot of fun building houses and barns and putting the wooden people, animals, and dinosaurs into our creations. Then it was time to check out and go back to the birthday party, but my girlie got sidetracked by a big easel with lots of magnetic letters on it. While she sang her "ABC's" (softly -- I tried to keep her volume down -- we were in a library, after all) she moved the letters around. Clearly, we need to work on her recognition of the letters -- as she sang, "X, Y and Z" she put up "O, O and O"...

She was not too happy about leaving the library, and while I tried to just hold her hand (and the books, and my purse, and her hat that she did not want to put on) and lead her over to the front desk to check out our books, she had something different in mind. She flopped herself down on the floor of the library in protest of leaving! I have to say though, even when she is having a temper tantrum, she is still the most polite kid I've ever seen -- while Mommy was bending over and trying to pick her up and telling her, "We have to go and get your sister from the party" she said, "NO, THANK YOU!!" I mean really, you can hardly be offended by that, right? I was finally able to bribe her (hey, you do what you have to do) or should I say, lure her, with the promise of her leftover french fries ("bum fries" is actually what she was calling them yesterday -- NO idea where that came from... or what it means...) from lunch that were still in the car. That did the trick, and we were able to check out our books and get back to the party in time to pick up my older daughter.

While we were at the library, my little girlie picked up a brochure for winter storytimes -- talk about a subtle suggestion! ('Course, it was bright pink and had a picture of Tigger, Pooh & Piglet on it!) But I'm glad she took it because we had so much fun (except for the leaving part) that we'll definitely go back again soon, and try going to the 2-year-old storytime!

We don't spend nearly enough time at the library these days, and after going yesterday, I realize what we've been missing out on! We get too busy with our other activities and getting things done around the house, but this was a fun activity for me and my little one (and I know her sister would have enjoyed it too!) and best of all -- it's free!

If you haven't been to your library in a while -- check it out!