Today at work someone had brought her two lively children into the library with her, and let them run loose while she worked. While I can see that it's probably very tough to handle two kids and work at the same time, and no professor is going to take "I couldn't find a babysitter" as an answer, I think that it would've been nice if she had at least kept the kids occupied with something other than a tricycle and a baby doll...
So here I come walking on my rounds in the mostly empty library, and I decided that to be nice to everyone involved I'd take the kids over to the little, badly-equipped "playroom" in the corner of the media center. No one was in there, at least, so I wasn't worried about keeping the kids quiet (they knew to be quiet but they're 4 and 5, so I doubt they had been properly drilled in self-control. Shrieks happen!). They tossed the puppets around, pulled a few books off the shelves and didn't bother me one bit. The puppets are entirely soft, so throwing them wasn't an issue. They finally settled on a game of "hit the monkey" with the blow-up monkey hanging from the ceiling and the puppets as balls. For little kids they had great aim!
I finally brought them back to mom after half an hour... she had said they were going to leave when I came up to her the first time, but she had apparently been thankful for the time without the little ones and had kept working. I didn't mind at all but I didn't want to keep the kids any longer without letting her know. I felt bad for them, though. It was obvious that they were bored and I didn't want to leave them unsupervised, but mom knows best... :/
