Been A While....

It's been a little while since I've had time to post an entry, but there have been big changes in my life. As the last post shows, the biggest adjustment for me was loosing my heart. I lost my baby Squirt after 9 years. I had raised him from a kitten, bottle feeding him and hand bathing him, the works, and he and I were super close. Burying him was the hardest thing I've ever done. Tigger, Rufus, Winston Ziggy-Stardust and I are slowly adjusting (not really) to the giant Squirt shaped hole in our lives, but it's hard.

My baby. ♥

Next up, I left a hostile working environment and moved to a different department. It is awesome to not be in a working environment that was making me physically ill. There are a lot a feels with that whole situation as well.
So now I'm no longer working in Children's Services, after 19 years I moved from Children's Services to Teen Services. Some of the previous libraries I've worked in had lumped teens under children/youth (don't get me started about that), but at my current place teens is lumped with Adult Services.
I have a lot of leeway with what I do in Teens, so this is a lot of fun for me. It's a learning curve, as I get away from the children's mentality and think teens, but I'm liking it a lot.
I've also joined Derby Lite, a roller skating class that teaches you the skills you need to learn to play Roller Derby. Which I am ridiculously excited about. I'm trying to get healthier and fitter, and the Derby Lite classes definitely help. I've also just joined the 21-Day Fix program to help me get healthier in my Derby goals. Being a librarian is pretty stationary, so I'm hoping the extra exercise boosts help.

I'm also hoping now that I'm a bit more settled in I can get back into a routine of posting here. I know I've lost some people in my months long gap.
Anyway, that's a lot of hoping and life changes, but that's what has been going on. With all these changes it might be time for a blog face-lift. Changes, changes.

Who, What, Why?

I'm Library Danielle.  :)  I've been officially working in libraries since the ripe old age of 14, and volunteered for a few years before that.  Books were my refuge as a kid, so it made sense to me to want to be IN a library.  At that point though there wasn't much going on in my library.  I think there was a story time for preschoolers, but it was just stories and maybe a paper craft.  No songs, no fingerplays, no flannelboards.  Just books.  Which is how I was taught to run my programs when I progressed up the library ladder.  I branched out a bit to include interaction and activities in my story times, but the rest was never encouraged.  As the years went by and I kept moving up I often to wondered about the "more" for story times.  I heard about others using sign language or props in their programs and was interested, but again, it wasn't encouraged.  And when I was moved to a Young Adult position I tabled story time and didn't think to much about it anymore. 

But now I'm in a new library where I have open permission to run story time as I see fit.  Which is super encouraging.  And it means that I can try new things- like songs and flannelboards.  I'm not too keen on the singing, even though I know the kids don't care, after so long I'm still self conscious.  But I'm singing.  And experimenting.  And hoping that I can find a niche for my programs.  Right now I'm running five programs a week- two baby/toddler programs, two preschool programs, and one all ages program.  I may switch the baby/toddler programs into two individual programs so one baby and one toddler, but I'm not really that confidant about my baby program skills yet.  I know it will take some experimenting and I just have to get my feet wet, but it is intimidating. 

I'm starting this blog to help me organize my ideas and plan story times.  I want to be able to share ideas, problems, and issues and get feedback from the wonderful community of libraries and story tellers out there.  I joined a wonderful group called Flannel Fridays and I want to share things that I'm coming up with.  Not that my flannelboard collection is very big, but it's growing and I want more.  My story times have a lot of potential right now and I want to begin to reach it, so I'm taking the first step by putting my ideas out there for comment. I'm really hoping to get feedback from my colleagues on how to reach that level I'm trying to.  :)