Storytime!

When we were living in Williamsburg, storytime at the library was our main weekly activity.  There were only two libraries in the county, and on any given day ONE of them would have at least one storytime.  I think we got spoiled - the children's sections were stocked with big wooden blocks, puzzles, a train table, and lots of comfy children's seating.  The storytimes were always well-organized and geared towards the age level attending.

I don't know why our libraries aren't as good!  We've been to almost every library within a decent distance, and while the book selection is fine, there's NOTHING in the children's sections but child-sized chairs.  It makes me sad that we can't just hang out at the library - there's not enough to keep both kids occupied.  And storytimes are *maybe* once a week, sometimes only once a month.  You have to sign up online, and usually any special activity is filled almost immediately.  The two storytimes we've been to were okay, but not really anything to get excited about.

When I found out our local Barnes & Noble has Thursday storytimes, I was pretty excited.  We have a neighborhood mommy book club every other Thursday, but we were off this week so we headed over to Barnes & Noble for their 10 AM storytime. 

It was pretty full already when we got there, but we managed to find a seat.  The kids were coloring while they were read stories, which I was thankful for.  It actually kept John Paul in one place!  His coloring skills are a little lacking - he can scribble and is getting decent at drawing circles.  It seems that he thought the theme of coloring today was "get all the crayons you can possible get in your hands at once and then tell your mom to draw numbers over and over!"  So Cecilia paid VERY close attention to the woman reading stories and John Paul kept his back to the stories directing my actions.  "One!  Two!  Fwee!  Fo!" and so on until he lost interest and had to go get another handful of crayons.

There was even a craft after the stories - a simple one, they threaded dinosaur cutouts onto a plastic straw, but John Paul enjoyed it.  And one of the best parts of the children's section at Barnes & Noble?  A train table!  I think we're going to have to start making that a weekly excursion, even if we can't hit storytime every week.  It's just tough because there are so many awesome books that are tempting to buy, but we generally don't buy books new (we get them at our favorite used bookstore or at library booksales for a fraction of the price). 

After storytime we ran to the grocery store for a quick trip - John Paul is always VERY excited to go to "Gi-yant" but this time he freaked out when I started to put him in the basket.  Oh shoot.  He saw one of the car carts in the cart return.  He had been SO awesome at the bookstore (took a bunch of toys off a shelf and then very patiently put every single one back on when I asked him to, shared trains with other kids, was generally awesome and cheerful) that I was going to get him a treat, so I decided this would be it.

I almost never let him ride in one of the car carts.  Those things are IMPOSSIBLE to steer and generally pretty beat-up.  But for just a quick trip, I figured I could handle it.  Plus he was just giddy when I put him in. 

Cecilia seems to have decided that she needs to be more of a help, so she helped push the cart:

Seriously, where is the handlebar cover?  I don't know HOW old these carts are...

We managed to get out of there pretty quickly, but I still had to sing the wheels on the bus (changed to "the wheels in the car") about 14 times while we were checking out.  It's pretty annoying having to be John Paul's personal singer all day every day, but at least I have tools to cope with boredom, fussing, tantrums, pretty much everything!