We are all card carrying members now...

at our public library. This was a big deal, I would like you to know. I was absolutely petrified of taking my mischief man into the library with all of it's wonderful quietness. Anyone who knows our mischief man knows that he is a "loud talker" of epic proportions. He has not yet mastered the art of the "inside voice," so I have avoided the library like the plague. Katie has been there before for children's programs but we had not gotten her a library card yet, as she takes out books each week at her school library and we have so many at home. The DD are also like night and day when it comes to their volume control. Katie is a "low talker." She speak so lightly sometimes that I have to ask her to repeat herself. I laughed the other day when she told me that one of the more soft spoken girls in her class speaks too softly. I told her that was the pot calling the kettle black, obviously a figure of speech lost on her but I still had to say it.

I am not sure what came over me today but I decided that this was the day that we were going to take our Dynamic Duo to our local library. I guess I was feeling a little more adventurous than usual or maybe I am becoming desensitized to Ethan's antics but whatever the reason, it was time! I told my family that this afternoon after school, we would be going and they seemed pretty excited. Well, Marc did not seem that excited but the kids did ;-)

On the drive over, I reinforced the rules of the library, topping the list was keeping zipped lips but if they needed to speak, then to speak in a very low "inside voice," kind of like a whisper and then I whispered to them for the rest of the ride to display the desired behavior. Now, I do realize that low talking is just fine but I need to reinforce this to the max for the E-man and his partner in crime the low talker.

We entered the library and split up from Marc who volunteered to fill out the paperwork for the cards (pretty slick of him) and I took the DD to the youth section. They began to search and did an awesome job finding books to bring home, all while being relatively quiet. We then sat down to look at the books and wait for Daddy to find us. He walked past us without seeing us at first and Mr E was so adorable as he whispered, D A D D Y...we are over H E R E!!!! We reunited and began to look at the DVD's together. Who knew!!! It has been so long since I have been in a library that I has no idea that you could take children's videos out....so cool! The pickings were a bit slim but no matter, we still found four to take home. Things got a little louder during that process but we moved on before the S hit the fan.

Marc told me that the kids had to sign the card in the presence of the librarian....huh?!? Four year old's need to have their scribble scrabble siggies witnessed?!? Marc looked thoroughly disgusted at the stupidity of that rule but we needed to comply, so we did. The paperwork and the cards took a bit of time. Time was becoming our enemy at that point as Ethan decided that he had been quiet long enough and started to get louder and more antsy. I corralled them into some chairs while I waited for Daddy to signal me over for the siggies, which took another few minutes. Before he did so, Katie spotted a young woman of Asian decent (our town has a very large Chinese/Taiwanese population :) and walked up to her and said "You are from China and so am I." She then proceeded to count to 10 for her in Mandarin. The girl was a young teen and did not look that excited to be engaged by Katie so I told Katie to say goodbye and she said "Zai Jian" and off we went back to the chairs for a bit. Finally, it was time to sign and get our cards.

All in all a pretty successful outing I would say. I think that my little mischief man is growing up and learning how to behave. Of course, the fact that he had been put back in the Yellow Zone in school for bad behavior today reminds me that he is a work in progress.

Hey, aren't we all?