Discovery

This week we had an adventure at the Children's Museum with Penny's cousin. Minus 100 points for me for forgetting to bring my camera. But, it was really fun. My hat's off to Penny, I think her attention span is longer than mine. She spent ages in one place and didn't want to move onto the next exhibit, even though I was ready to. I just wanted her to have the chance to see everything! Ooh, Penny! Look over here! Penny, look at this! Earth to Mom: Follow Penny's lead.

When you first walk in, there's an exhibit called "The Garden" where kids can put balls in tubes, some of which are pneumatic, so you can watch the balls get sucked into the air. Penny LOVED it. But suddenly, we were surrounded by hordes of noisy children carrying balls and clamoring for the tubes and I started to get claustrophobic. One child fell over and knocked Penny down, who knocked another kid down, and it almost resulted in a baby domino catastrophe. I hastily plucked her out of the pile of children and we moved on to the next part, before she could protest too much.

The next part was amazing. The "Kid's Eye View" has a construction site, a house, a grocery store, and a farm, where kids can play to their hearts' content. Penny found a baby doll in the house and she pushed it around in a little stroller for the duration of our visit. I tried to direct her attention to the other parts of the museum, but she wouldn't have it.

Me: "Penny, do you want to go to the store?"
Penny: (pushing the stroller) "No."
Me: "Ooh, we can put things in the cart!"
Penny: (walking away) "No."
Me: "Penny, do you want to see the farm?"
Penny: (pushing faster) "No."
Me: "We can walk dollies at home!"

At one point, I wasn't sure she would leave the baby doll behind, and I wasn't looking forward to the impending discussion about how that baby wasn't ours and that it had to stay at the museum. Fortunately, she left it behind long enough to climb on something, and when we turned around, another child had absconded with the stroller. Whew, dodged that bullet.

My favorite part was the little mouse hole inside the play house, where you can peek inside and see a tiny mouse hideout with tiny mouse loot. Penny and her cousin also liked the little bird house, which had two toddler-sized couches and a play kitchen. They might have moved in permanently, if given the chance.

Little did we know, we chose an insanely busy day to go. We thought schools were still in session, but some kids were on break and others were there for a field trip. The noise was tremendous and we didn't even make it to the second level before both girls were overstimulated and cranky. So, we had some lunch and went home for a nap. Discovery is exhausting! Let's go again!