such a flattering pose of me and my plastic pineapple, eh?
On Wednesday, I took my kids to Discovery Gateway which is the local children's museum. I was thinking that because I had a coupon it would be cheaper..... I was wrong. $17 total. So there was my first shock.
The second shock was the fact that there were no less than 467 small children in the museum along with 921 pregnant women. The place was packed. It was hard to maneuver. My toddler, overwhelmed by both the joy of all the toys and the masses of small and large bodies packed into the space, insisted that I follow him around. The idea of sitting placidly on a fake plastic boulder while watching my children explore, play, and discover while secretly learning at the same time quickly evaporated.
While, at first, I found myself enjoying the play, I couldn't control my OCD (obsessive cleaning disorder). I pulled plastic asparagus out of the water feature, dried it off and returned it to the grocery store. I emptied the overflowing kitchen cupboards of cauliflower, asparagus, peppers, lemons, potatoes, corn, apples, etc and returned the plastic food to the store, placing them in their designated spots in the produce section. I pulled plastic veggies from the construction zone, and eggs and chickens from the orchard and water feature, and baby clothes from the tool section and returned them all to where they belonged. I also intervened when a larger boy raced the police car up and down the aisles of the tiny grocery store; I made him stop and got a scowl or two. He, being slightly trained in public manners, waited until I left the store behind my toddler before he raced it back to the meat section (which was, incidentally, completely empty of meat; the salami and steaks were all in the produce section and sitting at the bottom of the overflowing grocery carts parked at the check stands). The items stayed in their appointed positions for 3.29 seconds before another child whisked them away to add the bread and tortillas to the construction site where I had been trying to build a small enclosure with padded bricks before another child came along and knocked it down for me.
It was comforting to find hand sanitizer dispensers located throughout the museum though I will admit that I preferred to use my own supply of 3 bottles in my purse. I applied the sanitizer liberally as I watched small children licking the plastic asparagus or drinking out of the juice containers. Bless the man/woman/company who created hand sanitizer and the pumps that can be so easily affixed to walls in public places that produce massive amounts of spit and snot in small children, like the children's museum.
As we neared the normal two hour time limit, I expected (secretly hoped) my children would be ready to leave. Nope. I did manage to convince them to leave momentarily (ie: an hour) so I could run down the road to buy bird food and so they could eat their sack lunches in the car. But then it was back to the museum where the crowd had dwindled to 856 pregnant women. We spent another hour and a half going upstairs and downstairs and upstairs and downstairs. Thank goodness for the elevator because those stairs were steep!
Each time I tried to play with a game or puzzle in the museum, I quickly attracted a crowd of small destructive children (not even mine) who were intent on demolition. That's why I finally gave up on trying to add the right size and color peg to the large peg board upstairs quickly. My kids decided that spending lots of time on the upstairs patio where the medical helicopter is located was much more fun at 2:30 in the afternoon when it was well over 90 degrees instead of during our first "tour" at 10:30 when it was a more comfortable 80. Luckily, there were small areas of shade on the patio and I only had to muscle out a few other moms to get completely shaded.
By the second leg of our exploration, I gave up trying to be in tune with the kids and secretly plugged in my iPod and listened to a book on CD. At least I could be entertained as I picked up the plastic matzah crackers and returned them to the bakery. I made it through Disc 3 while following my toddler up, down, around, through, and everywhere else in the two story building.
That pretty much sums up our trip to Discovery Gateway. I'm sure it was meaningful for the kids. I had pretty much emptied my hand sanitizer stash in my purse and found myself compulsively adding more to my hands as we drove home. Something about that many children just made me want to bathe in the stuff.
Oh, and I should mention that the picture of me and the plastic pineapple was the one time I actually got to sit on the plastic boulder and rest. It was comfortable until a large grandma sat on the other side of it, making it especially lopsided, and started yelling directions to family members across the room. It wasn't quite so relaxing after that, plastic pineapple notwithstanding.
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