Library Adventures - the good, the bad, and the really excellent

We took our first visit to the local library today. I just love libraries, although I'm still in mourning for my last library, which had couches and puppets and let you bring coffee to drink while your kids read and played computer games. Ahh, bliss.

We may get there again, if measure B passes, which we learned en route to the doors at a little political booth which gave stickers to the kids. I have no lawn to post a sign, but got on the email list if that counts.

I finally felt comfortable enough with my little guy not to worry, too much at least, about him destroying books right before running away, turning a fun outing into a panicked and yelling mommy strong-arming the kids out of there. My older son is obsessed with comic books, and I told him I'd like him to pick out a couple story books before getting his comic books. I told D he could pick out two book, and he sauntered back with two immediately, followed by all of K's rejects.

Good so far, here's where the bad starts. I sat D down in the little reading area, plenty of people around and told him to choose three of the books to take home. It was mostly a distraction while I looked for the comic books with K. We had a random conversation about "libary workers" versus "librarians" ("there's no such thing as a "brarian") in preparation for asking the nice librarian where the comic books were. For the life of me I can't remember what she said, but she chatted on until he finally asked his question

"Where are the comic books?" I was so proud of my little guy.
Her answer: "If you want Garfield, they are in the D rack. Right behind you, the D rack. That's where you can find Garfield."
He told her "I don't want Garfield." Unfortunately she said that's all they had, they had no "real" comic books. He loves those little batman and spiderman books, I'm not sure if those count as "real," but her answer was a tad disappointing.
We actually looked around for Garfied and got a little laugh over that.

This was only a few minutes time, and I was heading back to my other guy when he met me halfway, with the "come with me, you have to see this" that's he's copied from his brother. He dragged me back to his pile, which was spread all out now, but that didn't surprise me. Then he hits me with "that boy scratched me, and messed up all the books." I could not really believe it, but noticed this major scratch on his face. I was totally shocked. He's a pretty big kid, and I'm glad he doesn't fight back, but sheesh, scratched in the library. I opted for a "that boy, there, scratched you!" in a loud voice, rather than trying to hunt down the mom, since I hadn't seen what happened. Then we had a cuddle.

I then made a deal that we'd get a snack at the coffee stand outside, and head back in for the storytelling I'd noticed was going on in 30 minutes. We had to wait in line to check out, and I narrowly prevented a melt-down when D didn't get a library card like his brother, but went fairly smoothly considering we were so close to nap time.

The coffee stand was another little adventure. Big guy who nearly fell getting up to take our order. He made the hot chocolate way too hot, the latte way to milky, but was the sweetest man you could meet. After we'd been there for a while, trying to cool down the chocolate, and taking the kids to the potty, the man walked out with cake for the kids. He said he was Italian and loved kids and wanted to give them cake which would go well with the chocolate. It was the absolute sweetest thing. I swear kids are magnets for this kind of thing, scoring giant chocolate chip cookies at a cafe the other evening.

We topped off this lovely gesture with story time with Willy Claflin who was most excellent. Thankfully K saw a classmate, which nipped his whining in the bud. First he complained he wanted to go home, then he was upset as he wanted to stay longer. I can't do this guy justice, but he was really funny and kept the kids totally entertained for almost an hour.