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The other side of the coin

Dear Reader, I fear I've given you the wrong impression of my daughter. What with all the stories about laying on the floor next to her in the middle of the night while she screams for her mama. The demands. The need for constant attention. The whining. The throwing things, scratching, pinching. I can see where you wouldn't see the library coming.

Yes, the library.

Where she immediately obeys the request to put on shoes and coat. The library. The place where she gets a roomful of other parents to chuckle out loud because of her adorable cuteness. The library where she is precocious, personable, behaves with great confidence in her innate sociability. She has manners and enthusiasm.

The library is the place where she wanders into the playroom and immediately makes 5 friends who calmly and quietly play dolls, house, dress up, or pretend-cook. She cannot go 10 minutes without whacking her brother in the head with a plastic bin, but at the library she can sit and play with the hair of her new friends--delicately petting their heads and shoulders.

She even ended up hugging--a long, happy hug--with one of the new friends today.

Yes, the librarian has to patiently remind her to sit on her bottom because she gets too excited and wants to stand in front of others. But she also elicits big smiles as she sings all the words and does all the motions to all the songs. She cleans up and helps out and listens carefully to all the books. Though she will, occasionally, squeal with delight at a particularly cute puppy or bear or whatever we're reading this week. Today, it was a baby kangaroo who had eaten all of the book's cookie dough in a mystery plot.

I have no idea where this little girl comes from or how she puts it away so quickly.