The Children's Museum

The key to a good night's sleep...Make sure Grace is exhausted. Today's plan for wearing her out with a walk downtown was nixed due to the rain, so we headed to Baby Talk and then the Children's Museum. Her developmental progress is so much more obvious at Baby Talk because we do the same kind of activities from week to week. Each day she listens better and remembers more of the songs and activities. Today she even requested to get the shakers and dance to the "Shake It Baby" song when the children were asked for requests. During the owl book, she didn't try to climb up on Susan's lap, and sat on her bottom through the entire story. She did look back at me in amazement at the size of the owl and told me quietly, "Gulyam!" But, most of the time she was focused. She remembered the owl story and said, "Who, who..." while she was making her owl hand puppet. We are still working on helping her to choose a dominant hand, and practiced today. She really shows no preference what-so-ever, so we are trying to encourage eating, coloring, and cutting with her right hand. As a teacher, I know how much easier it is for students to be right-handed. So many things in our world are set up for righties. Mark is a lefty (I tease him about being wrong-handed) and he hopes she will decide to be right-handed, too.

"Big house," the Children's Museum, was also a hit. I had a hard time getting Gracie past the wind tunnels at the front door to even see the rest of the museum..She loved picking up the colored scarves and huge pom-pons to give to the bigger kids who were playing there. During our two hour visit, Grace spent most of her time in the grocery store area, pushing the cart and loading up on the groceries, but she also loved using the washer and dryer in the play kitchen where she made Mommy some tea, and changing the tires in the auto repair area. The climber was fun until the really big kids got on, and then she decided she wanted them to "baby" her. She has this way of looking at people and holding out her hands that makes everyone want to pick her up and help her. It was funny to watch her change from this confident, capable "big" girl who was climbing up and down  by herself into a helpless, needy "baby" in a matter of seconds. She really just wanted the attention of some of the school girls, so we moved along. Two hours was enough chaos for both of us, but we will definitely go back on the next rainy day. Maybe the next time there won't be two bus loads of kids...

Mission accomplished! Grace was nearly asleep when we got home from the museum, a 15 minute drive, and bedtime was a breeze.