Today we took the kidlets to The Children's Museum. This was a bit of a spur of the moment, as we only casually discussed the plan last night and didn't say much about it this morning until I called our neighbors and asked if they would like to go as well.
Yesterday or today - no one seems really certain on this - was the opening day for a Legos exhibit. Either all of the adults in our party are just old or this exhibit wasn't all it was made out to be. Oh sure...they had people dressed up in outfits, there were big chunky Legos for the really small children to play with, and they had a few lifesize characters - such as a knight - made out of Legos. However, I guess I was expecting some really intricate and LARGE displays created from Legos and we just didn't see any.
After the Legos, we headed back down to the lower level to see the permanent dinosaur exhibit. No matter how many times we have gone to the museum, I never tire of seeing the dinosaurs. It simply fascinates me that some of the skeletal displays are made up primarily of real fossilized bones with only minimal pieces being bone casts to fill in the gaps. Reiss and Milla are still a bit young to get a whole lot out of the dinosaur exhibit itself, but there are areas for them to play, as seen in the photos above. In one area, they have vest-type dinosaur costumes for kids and adults of all sizes and dino eggs made of fabric to carry around and place in "nests." Reiss is wearing one of the vests in the photos above. By the way, the glasses he wears are adult safety glasses my husband purchased at Menard's. My husband wears glasses so Reiss thinks he has to wear glasses too. He is like that with almost all pieces of clothing. If Daddy is wearing khaki pants, Reiss wants to wear khaki pants. At any given time, including up until the time he goes to bed, Reiss wears his safety glasses. When he gets into bed, he does just like he sees my husband do with his glasses and he sets his safety glasses on the table by his bed. Anyhoo...I'm getting off track here. I just wanted to explain the safety glasses because we have gotten questions about them in public quite often.
When the kids grew tired of playing with the dinosaur costumes and eggs - or perhaps I should clarify: when I got tired of a certain (much bigger than Milla) little girl repeatedly stealing Milla's dino egg while her parents obliviously stared on in the other direction, we decided to move on to another exhibit. It was either that or clobber the little girl's father who reminded me of a wet dishrag. So we moved on.
Next was the "Scienceworks" area and the best part of today's visit, if I do say so. The Scienceworks exhibit has several different displays that are very title appropriate in that they teach children how things work through science. This particular area is fun for everyone. They have a water area where there are boats and rubber "rocks." Another area is a lot like a big sandbox except for the fact that it is filled with mulch, shovels, and a digger that children can sit on and dig around in the mulch. Reiss especially liked this area because he loves any kind of truck or construction equipment or anything that my husband would refer to as "manly." Reiss dug around in the mulch for quite some time. Milla started fussing and wanted to nurse. I was very reluctant to whip out my breast in that area because Milla is one to try and flash the world my goods. Ultimately, Milla won and I sat there chatting with my neighbor with Milla lying across my lap, me hoping there were no peeping tom 8-year-olds trying to catch a peek, and Reiss trying to dig his way to China or South Africa or probably anywhere that is warmer than it was today in our little section of the world.
Eventually digging in the mulch lost its appeal for Reiss and Milla was "over it" as I always say when she is fussing and about to have a let-me-take-a-nap-or-you're-gonna-regret-being-in-public-with-me kind of meltdown so we all headed for the exit. We all placed bets on how quickly the kids would fall asleep (I said before we got out of the parking garage but in reality, Milla was asleep before we even made it to the truck and Reiss not long after getting strapped in his carseat.) and said good-bye to our neighbors since we were parked in different sections of the garage.
All in all, I think the kids had a great time. We were all exhausted and ready to get home. I was proud of myself and gave myself a mental pat on the back for not tackling the dino egg thief's dad. We had a great day!
No comments:
Post a Comment