Okay, ALSC, we did it. Got here, that is. And live-blogged. Which is pretty hard to do when you’ve got Conference brain and Baby brain, and you flew direct to Philadelphia from a family trip to Mexico with a newborn baby.
That’s right! We’ll be live blogging (with bad grammar and rushed, incomplete sentences) with visits from my 6 month year old baby. Is ALA conference going possible with a baby? We shall see.
So we did it. Daddy is back at the Philadelphia 201 with baby Hunter now. Our flight landed late last night. We connected in Denver. The second flight was harder because the baby cried. I felt bad about forcing the pacifier on him, but it was hard to get comfortable for nursing and he tended to be too worked up or stimulated to latch. So the second flight we were thattt family, but the first flight he was angelic. #parenting #newparenting
I’ve been going to conferences on the cheap since Las Vegas Annual, where I got off a CT-bound Appalachian Trail hike in Washington DC in order to attend a conference I hoped would help me understand the library profession and my tentative future in it. I was hiking home to Connecticut so that I could return to finish my undergraduate education at UConn. I didn’t know what I would study yet but knew I wanted to pursue a library career. And besides, I had the summer to hike 800+ miles and think about it.
Here I am now in Philadelphia, feeling like a grown-up (my first time staying in a conference hotel instead of CouchSurfing or AirBnb)!
It was easy to catch the conference shuttle from my hotel (Phil 201) (thanks bus sponsor, Gale). It was easy to ask someone where to get my conference badge and sweet tote. It was not so easy to find the childcare reimbursement form mentioned in the conference book. HINT: you have to go to ALA offices and they don’t have it located / printed yet). It’s nice that ALA offers something so progressive, but it’s sad that they’re not using it and that everyone at the check-in desk was totally miffed by my request. That said, a helpful lady personally escorted me to the offices and I ran into my best friend from Syracuse on the way. I can’t wait to see more of her and more of the conference.
For now, I’ve collected ribbons and ALA BINGO from ALA Lounge. I wait for my library director to find me at the ALA registration meeting point and I blog for ALSC. I hear a baby cry in the conference center and my heart hurts a little with missing Hunter. I think thankful thoughts in the direction of my childcare-providing hotel hubby.
My director and I will talk about the Drag Queen Story Hour program that he’s been pressured by members of our local community to postpone. I’m hoping to sort out my feelings about this program planning failure while I’m here. I can’t wait to reunite with my ALSC mentor Rosemary from Queens library (who is also blogging here)! She will have some thoughts of pure gold, as usual. I just finished my first year as a children’s librarian and program planning is hard, never mind when it gets political!
Which reminds me how stoked I am to see my friends at EveryLibrary. If you don’t know who they are yet, do a quick internet search and prepare to be intrigued.
BIG plans for the rest of the day. I’ll tune in again as soon as possible. Here’s what I’m imagining and forecasting for my immediate future: wet socks and shoes (it’s a rainy day here in Philly), book buzzes and scavenging for food, friend moments, getting lost in exhibits with my director, ALSC cookies and conversations at 4, I Love My Librarians! Award (which I got to attend in NYC last year as an EveryLibrary intern), the presidential candidates forum, shuttling to hotel to see and snatch my baby from amazing dad/hubby, David and… more shenanigans! Stay tuned.