Speed reading

I make a habit of reading four books simultaneously, several times a day. And I'm not gonna lie: Keeping everything straight can get a little crazy, especially when more than one child is pointing at random pictures and asking a seemingly never-ending train of rapid-fire "whazzats?" The key is to familiarize yourself with every book in the playroom so that you can fluidly rattle off the names of various objects (and sometimes their colors, too!), almost without even looking. One-track minds need not apply:

Library rues

You know how sometimes your kids just make you want to crawl under a rock and hide? That's how I felt this morning, when I was crazy enough to take the Fab Four to "toddler time" at the library.

Story time itself actually went fine. Our crew met up beforehand with my friend Alysia, her 3-year-old son, and her 1-year-old triplets, and then we all parked ourselves at the back of the classroom to sing a song and listen to a couple of stories. Isaac, Jude, and the triplets stayed in their respective strollers, but due to our stroller's design, the girls couldn't see unless I took them out. Although Lucy was quite content to sit in Alysia's lap, Dahlia just wanted to run around, which meant that I spent the entire time trying to keep her under control (I know one of the stories was about a giant potato, but don't even ask me about the other one!). Even so, I was ready to consider our brief trip to the library a success:

Listening to story time

Then came the embarrassing part. It started with Dahlia freaking out when it was time to go back in the stroller, continued with Isaac freaking out when he couldn't see me (I had to push the stroller out of the library while holding his hand from behind), and culminated with Jude and Dahlia freaking out when I put them in the van. To make a stressful situation even worse, a woman pulled in next to us while I was taking apart the stroller (amid screams) and coldly informed me that my kids didn't seem too happy (really? I had no idea!). By the time I climbed in the driver's seat, I was dripping with sweat and deeply sorry that I'd attempted to do something normal like go to the library with my kids.

Remind me when it is that children learn to control their emotions—it's soon, right? Right??