Friday, October 28, 2011

Library streaking...it's a new sport!

When I had just Jenna, even for awhile after Carter was born, we went to the library regularly. We went at least once a week, sometimes even twice. But once Jenna started school (and now with Carter in preschool) it has gotten hard to fit Storytime or Play Art in around bus pick-ups and drop-offs. I still take my kids to the library, just not as regularly. Actually, most of the time, I just place a request and pick it up at the drive up window.

Since I had items that needed to be returned, I decided to take Carter and Mary Ava to Play Art. Everything started out great. We got there early enough to select new books and movies before Play Art began and the kids even sat and listened quietly to the story being read by the librarian.

For those of you that have attended Play Art, you know there are are two kinds of moms. The ones that for whatever reason, whether it's the need to be in control, to make their children appear perfect, or maybe even just because they like to do childish art projects themselves, they will not let their child complete the art project themselves. Then there are moms like me, the ones that let their child do the entire project. Even if it includes cutting strips of garbage bag and stapling them to a paper plate with a ghost face drawn on with a Sharpie marker. Who cares if the face is a bunch of scribbles instead of the traditional ghost eyes and mouth? Who cares if Carter's strips of bag were cut in half length wise and were shorter than all the others. Who cares? Right???

Before she even touched the Sharpie to the plate, Mary Ava had marker on her hands. If you know my children they can't stand for their hands to be dirty. As soon as Mary Ava her marked up hands, she wanted to wash them. Somehow I convinced her to wait until she was finished the project and she continued coloring. After she finished, I tied the string on the top of the plate to hang her ghost, Mary Ava ran over to the sink to wash her hands and I moved on to help Carter finish up his ghost plate.

I guess Mary Ava was a little over zealous in washing her hands because when she came back to the table, her sleeves were wet up to her armpits. To say the least, she freaked out! Of course, I left the diaper bag in the car, but we were getting ready to check out, so I took her shirt off, put her coat on and zipped it up. This made her happy!

As we walked to the check out desk, Carter and Mary Ava headed for their usually waiting place...the chairs about 10 feet from the counter. I began placing the books and movies to be checked out on the desk when I felt a coat hit my bag. I didn't think anything of it, I figured it was one of my kid's coats. Even when the librarians behind the desk were looking towards my children laughing out loud, I didn't think anything of it. As I turned to see what was so funny, I realized that it was Mary Ava's coat that had been thrown at me and she was currently topless, running around the library and ever so happy about it!

At that point, as my two-year-old was running around the library naked, I finished checking out, grabbed her coat, put it on my streaking baby and headed for the door!