A New Love

I love the library. And I like taking the bus there; after all, it's a short two stops away and the bus stop is right outside of our apartment.

I may have passed on this love to the little one when I first took her on the bus (her first bus ride!) to the library a couple of weeks back. She loves the novelty of being in a moving vehicle, having the opportunity to swipe my EZ Link card on the bus and looking out the windows and exclaiming at the trees and everything that passes by outside.

And she loves the library too. Specifically, at this point in time, she loves Ian Falconer's Olivia. We have a couple of Olivia books at home in KL but we don't make it a point to bring books from KL to Singapore and vice versa. So I thought it'd be a good idea to pick out some Olivia books for her since she likes them and she doesn't get to read them if she's not in KL.

We left the library with 3 copies of the exuberant little piggy that day. Of course, after we had our reading session at the library. I read all three copies to her while she excitedly exclaimed over some of the details in the books. Loudly. If there were a hearing-impaired person at the children's section that day, he would have had no problems hearing the little one.

I also assume that there is a no eating/drinking policy at the library (dunno if that's really true or not) so of all the things I had to teach the little one that day, I taught her how to sneak snacks into her mouth as discreetly as possible.

"Leave your snack cup in the Mickey bag, babe. Just take out your snacks one by one and pop it into your mouth."

It was either that or deal with a temper tantrum.

So that went well.

And we've been heading to the library, on average, once a week since then. With the exception of the library being closed for a function that one morning Sasha was here, we've enjoyed our trips to the library immensely.

She makes daily references to going to the library, reminding herself and anyone else who is willing to hear, about going to the library, taking the bus there, and how it was closed, or how we borrowed the Olivia books from the library.

This is one love I wouldn't mind cultivating in the little one. I just have to be ready to explain to her about the libraries (or lack of) at home in Malaysia when we're back there one day. Better yet, I'll just let her visit one herself.