Now that we're back to "normal" (dug out of the snow and daddy's back at the office) we had a chance to start our regular rounds today.
The first stop was the library. We went to BOTH the Lynnwood branch and the Mountlake Terrace branch. I've been switching my pickups to Mountlake Terrace because we've been doing the toddler story times over there but the stack of the books I have at the house are checked out from Lynnwood. The good news is I got my FIFTEEN overdue books turned back in and I was able to pick up eight new items. The better news is that I can pick up from one branch and return to a different one so that will make my drop offs easier.
The Mountlake Terrace library is a little smaller and it was pretty quiet when we went in so I told the boys they could get out of the stroller and walk around a little bit. (They had to stay close to mommy though or we'd pack up and leave.)
The Mountlake Terrace library has a great children's section. TONS of books and even a little area set up for story times. There is a small table with chairs and puzzles, legos and bead sorters on it. They have two big baskets of board books that you can enjoy and check out. It was nice to have those baskets, no worries of the boys pulling books off the shelves or getting things out of order, they could rummage and I didn't have to sweat it.
The big hit of the space though was this.
When we wheeled around the aisle into the children's section the boys were first greeted with this huge crocodile sitting on the bright alphabet/number carpet. Miles rolled around on the crocodile and Graham crawled around in a circle shouting the numbers and even a few letters. It was pretty cute.
We sat on the floor, read some books, talked about the library set up. A librarian came over at one point to do some shelving and Miles walked right up to her "Hi!" he said, book in hand, looking up at her. She was a little surprised and smiled saying hi back. I said "Miles, she is a librarian. She is working to put the books in the correct order so people can find them." Miles looked at me, then back up at her and said "BOOKS!" It was so cute. She laughed and moved on to the next section with Miles trailing behind her. I thought I was going to have to get up and retrieve him but Miles trotted back over to me and swapped out the book in his hand with a new one to look at.
We hung out for a little bit longer but when Graham ran off to the front door at one point, I had to run after him looking over my shoulder at Miles. Whew! Time to go! Miles had picked out one book and wouldn't put it down so I told him he could hold onto it if he got into the stroller and sit down. Once I had him strapped in and Graham was happily playing with the legos again I decided I could read the book to Miles one more time. Then I packed up Graham and still couldn't get Miles to put the book down. That got me thinking, maybe it's time for us to be able to check books out for the boys.
You should have seen the smile on Miles's face when I asked him if he wanted to take the book home. That meant Graham would need to pick out a book too. He found a book about dogs and I snagged a couple more that looked good.
We went to the checkout area and I talked the boys through how to check out books, taking them from their hands and then giving them back when they were scanned. We wheeled past the librarian's desk to exit and the boys both shouted "BYE BYE" to the people we passed. Graham and Miles clutched their books all the way to the car when I snagged this picture.
It's official! Graham and Miles are now library patrons! I've never checked out books for them before because they're pretty rough on books and with twins it's hard to sit down and watch them carefully. We'll see how they do with this set of books. Hopefully we can make it a weekly ritual.
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