A visit to the Library

We will be marking this day down in the baby memory book. Today, I summoned the courage and coordination to visit our local library branch with the baby. I had wanted to take her for some time, but our branch has changed somewhat over the last year and half. The changes have not been bad, but really haven’t left me with a “got to visit” attitude. In fact, I haven’t really wanted to go because of the changes also in the overall library system. Besides living in a city with one of the nation’s top recognized public systems, libraries in general are in my opinion great on so many levels. However, our city/county library system recently underwent a huge change in management, staff reorganization/hiring requirements, started remodeling and adding on to its main branch, encountered a number of construction problems, has a number of relating lawsuits, and the city council governing body at best doesn’t really understand what makes a good system. Well, enough of my personal editorial on the local library and its new evolving system.

Anyway, I thought this being the baby’s first library trip, I should keep it short and pleasant. So, to my surprise when I discovered that trip there, in and out, and back home took only 45 minutes. And, this included running into an old classmate of mine who now works at our branch. Why was it so quick? Well, one I tried a new book selection strategy. Normally, I am one of those people who either looks for familiar authors, or browses for a while looking at the books and then select. But today, I tried the grab and go method. After my quick “it is so good to see you” conversation, the baby and I started toward the picture books. However, once I started to skim through various shelves, the baby started either a “I want all the books now” or “haven’t you noticed I am tired and want to go home” whine/cry.

So, even though I had thought I had timed the naps, feedings, and distractions just right, the baby reminded me that I still have a lot to learn about timing. It is funny though in all our trips out and about, this is the first she has been totally dissatisfied with a portion or the entire trip. Hum! Is this going to be a norm for our library trips? I hope not. This branch is starting a 13-month and up baby program in April that I would like to take her to. We did end up leaving with about 15 books of which some are familiar and others we will find out about. To be truthful the books are really more for me as I have been out of the book loop for a while. But, I did grab some that I think the baby might enjoy, but under careful assistance since we want to return them in the same condition we borrowed them. This may sound strange, but I don’t think I could ever borrow baby books, such as board or cloth books, from the library. Something about knowing how babies like to chew on everything makes me glad we have our own baby books.

A couple of the books we checked out included:

Go to Sleep, Groundhog! by Judy Cox

Sit, Truman by Dan Harper

On to explore what books bring.