Before she skipped town and moved to Denmark/Minnesota/Massachusetts (they just keep moving!), one of our former playgroup friends, Kate D., used to talk about the educational materials collection at the college library. She has a preschool curriculum for Zoe that would put most early childhood programs to shame, so she was always checking things out from there.

I don’t know why it took us this long to visit, but as I mentioned, we’re on a mission to find new things in our own neck of the woods, so today we made the journey. It was chock full of all sorts of teaching materials and I kept looking around thinking, “And I can check these out?”

Of course, with three kids to attend to, I was a little overwhelmed and only made it out with a few things. As opposed to the children’s department at our public library, this library contains students who are pretending to study and librarians who enforce that whole silence thing with an iron fist. Before we entered the building I gave the kids a big lecture about being quiet, the result of which was Neko periodically screaming loudly at Shep, “You need to be quiet!” and Shep continuing to be as loud as a nearly three-year-old is on an average day.

After we weathered a moderately successfully trip, as per Akiko’s hot tip, we took a sharp right out of the educational materials area and found ourselves face to face with a fully staffed Starbucks. In the library. With coffee. And pastries. I think my college library had maybe one vending machine with stale pretzels, while today’s college student can take a break from the stacks with a ventimochafrappathing and a scone. Heaven, I tell you.

Anyway, we made it home with a coffee for me and smoothies for the kids and these three dimensional charts of the different body systems. Shep has been totally excited about discovering that food turns into poop, so I thought we might try to impress upon him that the process is a little more complex than that trick where the magician has a quarter in one hand and then all of a sudden he pulls it out of your ear. Which right now is about as complex as it is in his head.

It’s crazy cold outside. Stupid cold. Even though we got some snow, I shudder at the thought of going out to play in it.

Yet, I’ve got these three kids. And after, oh, I don’t know, six hours in our house, the kids start to climb the walls. Or each other. Plus, that basement that I cleared out so the kids could ride tricycles and work off all that energy in the midst of winter? Still trashed.

But I’m trying hard to think outside the box, but at the same time, not travel to the Big City every day. All that driving is exhausting and it means losing all of Ellery’s naps to the car.

I often forget we live near a small college, and that college has resources. Akiko suggested a great diversion. The rec center has a small indoor soccer area which is totally enclosed by walls so that practice doesn’t bother the adjacent basketball players. We took the kids and way too many balls and let them go nuts. There was running and kicking and throwing, and Akiko and Beth and I probably all looked much relieved as we left the building, knowing our kids would be tired that afternoon.

All pictures other than the first taken by Neko (with less than optimal lighting conditions).