After my nanny told me that Story Time was cancelled at the library for the winter season, I was pretty disappointed. Granted, it was already competitive to get a spot the way it was set up because they required that the caregiver come with the child to pick up a ticket at least two hours ahead of the scheduled story time hour. That’s frustrating for many reasons: 1) that’s Kaia’s eating time frame, so how the hell are we supposed to bring HER to claim a ticket during that time? and 2) pretty much every caregiver and their baby in the neighborhood is going to be waiting and fighting for the last available ticket. They only allow so many caregivers and their children given it’s indoors and the city is still very scared of COVID and spreading illness, and so it basically meant constantly failing last fall for our nanny and Kaia in getting into Story Time.

So I did some digging on the NYPL site earlier this week to find out the library has a new policy: indoor story time (until summer, when they make it outdoors) is now limited to only 15 caregivers and their children; plus, the registration needed to be done at LEAST one week in advance online. The registration would promptly open at 9am about one week before. Well, I can stomach that. Online pre-registration would be a lot easier and more comfortable than rushing to the library two hours ahead of time and fighting with other caregivers and the endless sea of strollers.

Of course, I knew I was going to do this, and I was going to fight all the other Upper West Side mothers and get a spot for my nanny and kid. So I set up calendar reminders for the next three sessions to register ASAP. There’s no way I am losing this.