At the museum

Sometimes it's nice to take Kalina to places where she doesn't have to behave. Where everything is touchable and some things are the right height. This afternoon was just such a time: tired of telling Kalina "no standing in the cart" or trying to clean with a tornado following in my path, I instead took her to the local science museum.

I would move in to this museum if I could. It's perfect. With live animals, cool things to play with and lots of room to run around, it's the ideal habitat for a toddler. What's more, the outdoor areas are mostly shaded and there's free admission for county residents on Wednesday afternoons. We're regulars.

However, Kalina and I had never gone by ourselves--we'd always had other kids and/or parents along. So I packed a snack, piled toys into the carseat, sang songs half the way up (it's a 20-minute drive--the only downside) and let Kalina take the lead.

First, like always, she greeted the large glass/plastic globe-ish balls that no doubt illustrate the coriolis effect or something else equally irrelevant to Kalina. They're clear across a gallery from each other, so we ran back and forth, squealing with joy, to pat first the blue one and then the white one, and then the blue one again. We spun them and admired their perfectly round beauty. I indulged her and made sure she was content before nudging her on.

Next, we heading into the indoor animal area, in the darkened entry of which lives a small owl (behind glass, of course). Kalina became transfixed when the owl flew from one branch to another. "Agah!" she said, looking at me expectantly ("agah" means "again"). Fortunately, the owl took pity on me and obliged the girl. We wandered through the rest of the exhibit, pointing out snakes, turtles, fish and a woodchuck.

Kalina knows the route through the museum to the play area, and as we took this path she stopped once to exclaim over a shark movie they had playing. She also wanted to sit in a red leather chair, so we did that for a while.

And finally we were at the play area, which Kalina would probably trade me for. Better yet, despite the fact that it was a free Wednesday afternoon, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves. Kalina ran directly for the various ball track toys they have and went to work rolling. Then she showed remarkable balance stacking blocks (it's like she knows the skinny ones don't balance well!), helping me pick them up when we were done. And so forth.

The girl probably could've stayed here the rest of the day, but the weather was too nice and I figured she might need some downtime in the stroller, so I ushered her out the door. We set out to see the farm animals. Kalina now knows how to "baa" at the sheep, so we did that for a little while. She giggled at the bunny, probably because it looked like the stuff it was eating was cilantro. Who knew that's what they like? Kalina was as surprised as I was.

And then we came to the dinosaurs. I don't think Kalina quite knows that they're not real--they're just life-sized statues. She enjoyed climbing on the one you can climb on (its tail was about the right height for her to straddle), but her favorite is the toothy tyrannosaurus rex. You can see it from far down the path, and Kalina always laughs as we approach it. I have to admit, if you didn't know that its teeth are pointy for a reason, you could easily think it's simply finding something uproariously funny. Kalina merely joins in. We strollered around a few others that were also amusing (she especially liked the round dinosaur egg models), stopping at the dig site where kids can try to gather fossils and sharks teeth from seashore gravel.

Kalina found a couple buckets and some big rocks and was in heaven. I even found something that might have been a shark's tooth (that got tossed into the obscurity of gravel by a little boy I gave it to, but, whatever). While Kalina sorted and dumped, I sat down to a well-deserved break and left her uninterrupted. Then I pulled her away from the dinosaurs to take her to see the butterflies.

Which were somewhat disappointing. "Look, Kalina, over here!" I'd exclaim. Twelve seconds later when she'd finally turned her head, the butterfly would be long gone and she'd be frustrated. Fortunately, toward the end we had better luck as one that was either new, or hurt, or tired or just mellow sat and flapped its wings for us for a while.

It was time to start winding our trip down, but we went through the barnyard again on the way back, where Kalina got far more excited by the toy balls the sheep had in their pen to play with than the animals. "Wow, look, Mom, there are more in the next pen, too! Wheel me over there!"

We also stopped at the sound room, where a sort of music is triggered by motion on a floor. It was rather crowded and loud, but Kalina was glued in her spot on the side of the room, like a little wallflower, smiling broadly. Huh. We stayed put a few minutes before heading back to say goodbye to Kalina's old friends, the blue and white glass/plastic balls. See you next time!

Photo: Taken a few months ago, Kalina trying to play with museum blocks that are about half her size/weight. You'll have better luck with the smaller ones, child!