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My husband and I welcomed our daughter Morgan into the world on April 24. I, thankfully, had a short labor; my water broke at 11:15am, and she was born at 7:57pm. She weighed six pounds and 1 ounce. She’ll be three months old on Saturday, and she has changed and grown so much in that time.

Now that I’m a mama, I’m starting to get back into children’s books. Before I became an academic librarian, I worked as a bilingual library assistant in the children’s department at my local public library for a couple of years. I mostly planned and performed the Spanish and bilingual preschool story times, and I’m excited to use those skills again.

I made Morgan a Goodreads account to keep track of the children’s books we own / those we read to her. I was really interested in using The StoryGraph to break free of Amazon (you can easily move Goodreads data over to The StoryGraph), but when the first book I went to add wasn’t yet part of their database, I just didn’t have it in me to add the extra details. I know it takes people doing this work to get more established, but I’m just not in that mindset right now. If you would like to keep tabs on what we’re reading, you can friend Morgan here.

I’m also having Morgan participate in 1000 Books Before Kindergarten through our local public library. Many public libraries around the country participate in this program. Our library uses Beanstack to track the books for 1000 Books Before Kindergarten and the summer reading programs for kids and adults. Speaking of summer reading programs, I need to sign up myself because I’ve been reading a lot more, mostly thanks to the library’s Hoopla and cloudLibrary apps. I can listen to an audiobook or read a few eBook pages while tending to the baby. For those who don’t know, my anxiety makes reading books for pleasure a challenge. I’ll try to share what books I read on a monthly basis on the site, but I also have a Goodreads account, which you can find here.

Since the full-time librarians at Merced College have 10-month contracts, I’ve been able to be with Morgan all summer long. My colleagues and I go back to work in person in a few weeks, and while I’m dreading leaving her behind, it looks as though each full-time librarian will be able to work remotely one day a week. Just knowing I will be able to spend time with her during my lunch hour one day a week makes me feel a lot better. (This will also help cut down on my commute as I have to drive two hours round trip.) Despite the pandemic not being over, I’ve had the loveliest summer taking care of the baby and reading books.