Boston Children's Museum

I flew solo today--Natalia was out at Devens helping to organize an Ultimate tourney, and I was stuck with able to spend the entire day with my two beautiful children.

Avid readers will know that Saturdays are usually busy days because of swimming lessons. Today was no exception--though the current session doesn't require us to dip into the pool until 10:00, enabling us to waste more time at home before piling into the car for the arduous 8 minute trip to the Y.

This was my first time handling both Andres' and Celia's lessons alone. The lessons themselves are no trouble; Andres has been in a class without parents for about a year, so we just have to drop him into the pool and our obligations are over. Celia does still require one of us to carry her around in the pool while she kicks with one leg, reaches for plastic ducks, and jumps in (she has caught me off guard a couple of times), but she's cute so both Natalia and I gladly suffer the cold water for her.

It's actually the post-lesson scramble that worried me. Getting two kids (and myself) showered and changed in a crowded locker room is not that fun, and I had visions of being trapped in there all day long, chasing after Celia while Andres did his best to stuff himself into a locker. Yes--this is a popular game among the 1-4 year old set at the Y.

Swimming went swimmingly and then, to my surprise, the bathing suit-to-clothes transition was not horrible. I figured I would go in order from most to least needy. Thus Celia was dressed first, while her brother waited relatively patiently. One down. I then let Celia roam around the locker room while I changed Andres (Celia seemed to delight in running all around the wet tile floor, which kind of makes sense if you know her at all). I kept shooting him stern looks that were meant to say "I need you to be serious and get changed quickly and efficiently here." He looked back at me with an expression that I read as "I think it's funny that you're making this face at me." Eventually, two down. Then the toughest part--I crossed my fingers and threw on my own clothes while my two lovelies crawled around on the floor (awesome!), chased each other (yay!), and tried to stuff themselves into lockers (great idea!). Three down, not a moment too soon.

With the rest of the day in front of us we headed into town to meet friends John and Jack at the Children's Museum. I had been there with Andres only once, and it must have been more than 3 years ago, because I remember that he was not able to do much during that visit...he gummed on fake vegetables and tripped over himself a lot, if memory serves correctly. Celia may have already visited the museum with grandparents in tow; this was my first time taking her.

We met up at the giant milk bottle, had a quick bite to eat, chased some birds, and then headed inside. I then realized that although I had heard multiple accounts of how wonderful and interesting the Children's Museum was, I didn't have the foggiest clue about what there was to actually do there. (During Andres' first visit years ago, we stayed in exactly one room the entire time.) Luckily John and Jack had been there more recently and had some ideas about where to go and what to miss.

We started in a room with a lot of golf balls and metal tracks, and then quickly moved into the bubble exploratorium. This space was more slippery but definitely safer than the first room.

You can see Andres was enthralled to be working with giant bubbles:



He did have more fun trying to surround himself with one giant bubble cylinder:



After the kids got good and sudsy we went upstairs to the construction zone. Lots of construction equipment and small machines here; Celia especially had a good time wandering around with a hardhat on.

Small man in a small machine.

There were varying levels of crankiness over the next few minutes as we searched for other activities of interest. It was getting to be mid-afternoon by this point and I started to feel like I was on borrowed time. You know what always seems to put kids in a better mood though? Steel drums.



Turns out water is actually a lot of fun too; we found a world of water and sand, and all three kids were happy again.

Jack manning the dam controls.

Andres enjoyed filling up and dumping out tubes of water.

My poor daughter really wanted to enjoy the water and sand room, but she was about 3 inches too short to reach over the edges of the tables and do anything. It seemed like poor design on the museum's part...no stools, no extra-low tables, no nothing to help the really young scientists participate. I lifted her up for a few minutes and let her scoop and dump the water like her brother and Jack were doing...but all that got me was a wet shirt and an aching back. She seemed to enjoy the little time she was able to play though, which bodes well for future visits.

Finally we took off the smocks and left the water room for a quick wind-down trip to the toddler room. This was a nice change of pace. Andres played with trains by himself for a while, Jack had fun pushing around a little cart, and Celia...well, she was right at home.

First, she constructed a tower and demolished it with glee:



Then she tried (unsuccessfully) to take care of two babies.



This was a good experience for her though--now she can better appreciate how it feels to be me or Natalia. Right?

We headed out soon after. It was a good visit. No tantrums from any party, no bloody noses, and some good playing accomplished. There were even some unconfirmed reports of sharing.

John and I had snippets of time when we could actually exchange a couple of sentences with each other (this was, after all, one of the reasons why we thought it might be fun to hang out at the museum), but all of our chasing of toddlers proved too high a barrier for us to have any real conversation. I should be used to this now though...ever since Andres was born, the part of my brain that used to generate interesting peer-to-peer conversation has been reassigned to be a catalog of random pieces of information largely centered around the location of sippy cups, child-friendly bathrooms, and snacks. I feel like I've become a very boring person with an acute ability to produce water, on demand, for my kids.

I don't think this bothers me too much, though. It was nice to spend solo time with both kids; it reminded me of all the trips the three of us took last spring during my leave. I miss those days.