books and babes

When we moved to Austin four years ago, the youngsters and I were at BookPeople at least twice a week. At first it was Catcher (3 years) and Scout (1 year) with Tillie still in my tummy (she made her BookPeople debut at the ripe young age of nine days). The late morning toddler story time was a life saver. I looked forward to that twenty minutes, which we could stretch to about 45 on good days, at 10:30am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Sometimes--but only sometimes if the wind was blowing in the right direction and all the planets were aligned--we could skip (no skipping really; I walked while Scout strolled and Catcher rode on the board attached to the back) over to the Whole Foods one block down for a lovely al fresco lunch.

I loved our time at BookPeople because it's the coolest book store ever, but inevitably someone would be reduced to tears before we made it down the winding steps and out the front door. There was that time that Catcher threw a tantrum of epic proportions during a Christmas carol sing-along. I was embarrassed (and honestly bummed because we couldn't stick around for "Feliz Navidad") to drag him kicking and screaming from the store. Not to be outdone, there was the time Scout hid in the tunnel under the stage in the children's section and freaked me the hell out because she wouldn't answer when we called. Not surprisingly, she emerged minutes later with a wide grin on her face. There was also the time she almost squeezed a baby bunny to death when the traveling petting zoo was visiting the store. We've had some interesting times at BookPeople, but never in my wildest dreams did I envision this happening:

We were at the store for two hours this afternoon. And this is what was happening the entire time (if you forget about the part where Tillie went tearing through the store as we entered with her "helpful" siblings trailing behind at lightning speed). You know--they just wanted to catch her before something was destroyed. The rest of our time was spent browsing and reading and playing the part of the perfectly happy, chill family visiting the local independent bookstore.

Then on the way out, Catcher got distracted by a creepy pigeon mask. I would have laughed if I could have calmed my racing heart after seeing this from the corner of my eye:


That mask is creepy. Did I mention creepy?