A fireman and some wash and some stairs for so we can step on the fireman. Dragons. Firemen. Nathan on a mushroom. Babies. Kids. Firemen. Monkeys. Daddies. Ball. Firemans. Bubble. Dragon. Fireman. Fireman. Washing our hands. Painting. Fireman. And the dancing room! (And Isabelle did some dance moves there)

Those were Isabelle’s exact words when I told her to talk about our trip to the Children’s Discovery Museum. Judging by the amount of times she said “fireman”, I guess her favorite part was dressing up as a fireman and playing with the firetruck.

Or maybe that was just the most memorable. Because honestly she enjoyed every bit of the museum.

Have you seen these needle thingy toys? We see them at Target all the time. Whenever we happen by one in the toy section we push our hands into them. So imagine how fun a 7 foot or however tall wall of needle thingies are. Isabelle and I started out with our hand prints like usual and then it quickly devolved into smacking all the needles out while she furiously tried to smack them in the other direction.

Why can’t they have more museums like this? I think Isabelle enjoyed this even more than the Exploratorium but of course it is geared towards children hence the name Children’s Discovery Museum. The Exploratorium was more sciencey, is that even a word?

We spent quite a while with each exhibit. I’m sure she would have happily played all day in each one if we didn’t coax her on to the next thing. I thought getting her away from the water would have been impossible.

All that splashing and balls and wow how did we walk her away to lunch? I do not even know.

A big hit was the bubble area. It was downstairs and hardly noticeable and happily practically empty. There were several areas with bubble solution in them. And a bubble would spit out singly from above.

A little boy was down there trying to get the bubbles, falling from the sky, through his hoop. One landed on Isabelle’s hand by accident. I don’t think Isabelle has ever caught a bubble in her hands before. So once that happened she was hooked. She wanted to do it over and over and over. And she did.

I know my favorite exhibition was in the newly opened Living in Space. I’ll just show you the pictures of my favorite part.


Need I say more?

Isabelle had a blast.

And look at the totally cute photoshopped pictures I got.

Rollover for original. I thought how cute if I could get a picture of the two kids sitting on the mushrooms next to each other by themselves. Ah, yeah. But Nathan can’t sit up on his own.

Rollover for original. Then I thought for this picture how funny if I could get Nathan to look in the direction of the monkey, like they were looking at each other with their crazy hair. But I couldn’t fake it without his eyes looking all weird. This is as close as I got it without spending hoards of time on it. And I think I made Nathan look a little cross-eyed.

At the end of the day we left with a dragon puppet that Isabelle made with my help. She told me where she wanted everything placed and I helped her glue it down.

And a corn husk doll that I made her. I didn’t know they were so easy to make. Isabelle loves it.

Oh and thanks for the tip about being careful to wash up Kari. No one is sick so far, knock on wood. I was a little paranoid with that.

Kari mentioned to us that whenever she goes to that museum, someone ends up sick. Then at the museum we met a mom from our homeschool group who was there on Wednesday and went back again and her kid was sick. And the young woman working in the corn husk area was sick. So of course I was a little bit (a lot) worried.

After we washed up to leave, I wouldn’t let Isabelle touch the elevator button. I’m totally laughing about this now but at the museum I was trying to push the elevator button with my elbow, which didn’t work. I ended up pushing it with my finger through my shirt. Then when we were walking out, Isabelle kept telling people she couldn’t touch anything because she was clean. And I felt like such a freak teaching Isabelle that. So, we let her play and touch everything on our way out. Then I sanitized all our hands when we got to the car.

On the hellish drive home, in two hours of traffic, Isabelle fell asleep on her corn husk doll. She cried when she found it smooshed and it’s arms no longer part of the body. I fixed it but in her words, “it’s no longer pertuf!” (how she pronounces perfect). I guess that means another trip to the museum.