My Baby Bookworm

Today being Thursday, we went to the library's program for babies. The past few times we've been there Pearl has not wanted out of my lap, but she smiles and laughs as babies and toddlers scamper around, and the adults sing and play hand games. Today she warmed up right as the program was ending and was clapping, then got up and did a little scampering around of her own.




It is always a lot of fun to see all of the babies; the little tiny ones who stay put and take it all in, the fearless crawlers, the new walkers waddling around, the older tots singing and dancing along with the program's director. My favorite part of the program is the last verse to The Wheels on the Bus - when all the adults in the room sing, "The parents on the bus go 'Shh shh shh!'", all cooing and babbling and shouting and moving ceases and silence falls almost eerily across the room. Then the director wisely uses this moment of calm to start reading the day's book.



After the book it's pretty much a free for all. A tub of books is set out for the babies. The moms gather up in clusters to chat... it's pretty clique-y, and being clique-less I feel rather left out and lonely at that point. (The playgroup I'd been going to fell apart with the advent of cold weather, so I'm feeling extra sad in this area.) Everyone seems to know people and have no interest in interlopers. Once I chatted with a nice mama who seemed to be like-minded, but I never saw her there again.

In the last picture, Pearl is investigating a little boy laying down with a book... he shortly afterward started kicking her, then later quite purposefully smacked her in the face with a book as she wandered by him! Poor Pearl was a little perplexed but other than that was okay; it takes more than that to get her down. Having been out of the daycare scene for a few years, I hadn't witnessed any baby-on-baby violence in a while. Was kind of startling.