Any accurate headline would be a spoiler

Sean and I went to a story-time for slightly older kids at a DC library this morning, and while Sean looked about the same size as some of the other kids (ages: 2-3), most of them were with daycare folks, and most of the other kids seemed to be more experienced with the concept of sitting down and paying attention to the person talking at the front of the room.

Generally, when we've gone to story-times, this hasn't been something we've focused on as much; Sean usually likes to wander around the central area (okay, and the periphery as well), and sometimes focus on the librarian, story, and/or song, but sometimes focus on other things in the room. And that's generally been fine, it's generally gone well, and other kids have generally been doing the same thing in those situations. However, the vibe today seemed to be more of a sedate and orderly one, so I was quicker to retrieve Sean from the front of the room, or the stack of padded cushions in the corner, or from other kids.

As he's done in the past, he found the easel at the front of the room interesting, and he wanted to check it out repeatedly. It's the same easel that's usually up at the front of the room, and it had a black sticky-felt mat on it, which was empty... until near the end, when the librarian started to put up cut-out pieces of colored felt that represented all the things the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate. One red apple, two green pears, three purple plums, oranges, etc. - and then the Very Hungry Caterpillar stopped counting and just ate everything in sight: pie, ice cream (i.e., "What flavor is this?" older toddler: "Pink!"), spaghetti, and god knows what else; I sort of lost track because Sean started walking towards the easel again.

Now, the thing is, I was wondering if the Very Hungry Caterpillar was about to be the Very Sick Caterpillar, and I know kids have a penchant for just tossing everything on the floor at some point, so I was vaguely aware of the possibility of things going awry here... but I didn't really expect that in the course of extricating Sean from under the easel, we would cause it to tip forward just enough that the felt cut-outs would all lose their cohesive connection with the board and fall down on and around us. Well, really only on and around me, since Sean was still behind the easel. (Smart kid.)

I think it only felt like all the food landed on my head.