Strawberries and Storytime

Last week a friend of mine invited me to meet her at the library for Toddler Storytime, a half hour program complete with reading, fingerplays, and music/movement.  We got there a little late, but my friend had saved me a seat (on the floor of course) and I sat down cross-legged with Lydia in my lap while the stortyteller read the kids a book.  The funny thing about "toddler" storytime, is that the only people really paying attention to the book are the parents.  The "toddlers" are actually chattering and squawking, and several were running around on the stage behind the storyteller.  After the storyteller finished reading her story, we did a fingerplay where we laughed and clapped and spun around, and THEN we got to play with scarves.  Lydia was somewhat interested in the scarves, as I frequently play a game with her where I put some piece of cloth on her head and she has to pull it off.  She got so into the scarves that she pulled the scarf off the head of the woman sitting directly in front of us!  For Lydia though, the best part of storytime was running around with the other kids.  She just LOVES kids (and climbing), so she was in heaven watching all the other kids climb onto and run around the small stage area.

Right before storytime, I decided to attempt strawberry picking.  I figured it would be difficult with Lydia, but not impossible.  As it happened, my assessment was dead on.  I honestly could not remember the last time I went strawberry picking, so I don't know if this is true with all strawberry patches, but the strawberry patch we went to plants their strawberries in raised mounds (think Indian burial ground, only in rows), so it wasn't like you could easily go through the plants.  I was grateful for this, because I had visions of my dear daughter running willy nilly and stomping through neat little rows of strawberry plants.  She did run, but after giving her a little bit of a head start, I just set my bucket down and followed her down the path.  I usually caught her before she got into too much trouble.  She even picked a couple of strawberries and put them into the bucket!  I was mostly impressed (with myself) that she only managed to get ONE strawberry into her mouth.