The library is only about a mile from our house, so I drove a circuitous route through the neighborhood so Alice could look at Christmas lights. Everything is new for her again this year, but it is even more fun for us because she can articulate her wonder. Last year she would just name what she saw, but this year she adds her opinion. For example, when I slowed down outside this house, she said, "Wow! Look at those purple lights! Those are my favorite!"
We eventually got to the library, and I just had to pick up our books from the hold shelf and check them out. Since both of the self check out stations were occupied, I checked them out at the counter, and somehow lost track of Alice. I quickly started searching the library, vaguely recalling which direction she went. She soon popped out of the adult stacks holding a book, and proudly proclaiming, "Look mommy! I found a chapter book!" She has been obsessed with chapter books for a few weeks now, ever since the concept was introduced to her. Every night, she gets three books before bed. I forget how we settled on that number, but she has made the connection to her age, and keeps saying, "When I'm four, I will get to read four books before bed!" I told her that actually, as she got older, the books would get longer and we would actually read fewer books. Then, I said, some books, called chapter books, are so long that you only read one chapter at night.
Well, you can imagine her delight when some of the next set of library books had chapters! Zac taught her about book marks, and I must say, we were also delighted to only have to read one chapter of these longer books, in addition to two other books.
I convinced her that she was not yet ready for James Patterson, and she remembered where she had gotten the book, so we put it back on the shelf and headed for the grocery store to pick up some snacks for daycare.
When we arrived at Harris Teeter, Alice looked up at the full moon, which we had also admired from the library parking lot, and she said, "Look! The moon has a galaxy around it!" The cloudy sky had caused a bright glow surrounding the moon, which did indeed look like a foggy-bright Milky Way galaxy from her space books.
Normally at Harris Teeter I have her ride in one of the carts with a steering wheel for kids, but since the store was not very crowded, and we only needed a few things, I found a child-sized shopping cart for her to push. The child could not have been more happy. She also loves eating the meat and cheese samples (we may have done two laps for simply that purpose). But she is very good and always puts the toothpick in the little trash can. Once, at home, Simon had snapped the tines off of his plastic fork, and Alice took one of them and poked her fruit with it like a toothpick and said, "Mommy! I'm eating samples!"Back in our driveway after our errands, as I was unbuckling her from her carseat, Alice asked, "But mommy, when are we going to run to the library?" She is a bit like Amelia Bedelia in that she still takes some phrases literally. My favorite is when I said I was going to go jump in the shower, and Alice's eyes got really big, and she said, "Mommy, I want to jump in the shower with you!"
She drives us nuts sometimes with her lollygagging and delaying and negotiating everything, but at the same time, she can make running a couple of errands a fun little expedition, even although we didn't get to do any running.
