::big city day trip::

Kris had a work event yesterday in New York city. We talked about it and decided it was cheaper for him to drive and take the train, and that way he could take Max and I along.
We left in the morning and got there around noon. Kris went to his work thing and Max and I hopped on the subway to head uptown to the American Museum of Natural History. Wow is that a BIG place. We shared an incredibly overpriced yucky lunch in the cafeteria ($17 for sandwich, drink, cookie) and then headed up to see what we could find. There was way more stuff there than we could ever see in a day.
We started with the North American mammals hall. Taxidermy heaven, let me tell you! It was cool though, Max liked looking at the animals.

Though of course you wouldn't know he's enjoying himself from his face. That's not the face I'd be making if I was standing in front of an insane moose fight, that's for sure.

This facial expression is slightly more appropriate, though not much. Man those bears were huge. That one standing up had to be twice my height.

Seems being stalked by bears and being swallowed by enormous crustaceans looks about the same.
The ocean stuff was really cool. I'm not sure how many of the animals were models vs taxidermy jobs, but they all looked cool. And there was an immense model of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling. I was impressed.



This picture is of a really tall wall where they had animals divided up by kingdom, species, phylum, etc. It was really neat. I could've looked at it forever, but of course with Max around we only look at things for a maximum of about 3 seconds before moving on.
Unless it's some computerized thing of course--then we stay there for hours. Boring.

I don't think I've ever seen anybody using those interactive computery things besides little kids. Do you think anybody's ever told the museum people that?
Mr Webb's dream:


After the ocean I took Max up to the top floor to see the dino bones. I was hoping I might get cell reception up there, since the place is way too immense to have any downstairs. It barely worked. It was a good thing it did though, because Kris got done early.
We explored some dinos. I think Max is still a little scared of them though. He wasn't that interested in looking very long.
And I don't blame him. I think they're pretty frightening myself sometimes.

Like that claw, YIKES.


I don't know how many peoples lovely posed pictures max spoiled by walking right in front of them as they pressed their shutters, but I know it's more than one, and I'm guessing not less than 10. Oh well. Do you really need a cheesy posed photo of yourself in front of EVERY single exhibit in the museum?

No way. We don't do cheesy posed photos around here. Never.

Luckily Kris finished up right about the time that I got tired and Max started running away from me around exhibits, giggling and dodging. Since I don't think that's fun we headed out back down to the subway.
On the way out we saw one of Rachel R.'s friends.

Ewwwww. He sends his love. I told him you didn't want to see him anytime soon.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell the best part. We took a bathroom break on the way out, and of course since my little boy is not the type to actually stay where I ask him to, he has to come in the stall with me. That's bad enough, but he's always messing around with the door when I'm in there. So of course, as I'm using the facilities the door swings wide open. There are tons of women and children coming in and out and everyone sees me. Even worse, he doesn't even close the door himself. I have to stand up and close it.
Awesome, right?

After I blocked that experience out of my mind very carefully we got back on the subway and went to meet Kris at Grimaldi's pizza, under the Brooklyn bridge. And boy was it good. We didn't even have to wait in line because it was 4:30 PM on thursday!

The crusts are thin, the cheese and tomato sauce is super fresh and the basil is whole. Mmmmm.

Can you see it steaming? Everybody should get a piece of this stuff. It changes your whole definition of the word pizza.
Anytime anybody wants to go we'll meet you there.

Then we got on the road and took the long drive home--oh, but not before Max decided he needed to poop and took up the Grimaldi's bathroom for about 20 minutes.
The joys of a five year old in the big city.....

::"Our" Children's Museum::

Max has been dying to go and visit the Providence Children's Museum ever since I let it slip to him that there was one in existence. So finally the other day we talked our friends into picking us up, and we went to check it out.

For some reason they give out free tickets to the museum at the library. Since we basically live right across the street from the library I went over and picked up free tickets for all of us.

It was pretty fun. It wasn't as nice as the Manhattan one though, and didn't come anywhere near the one in SLC. So far that one has been by far the best we've seen.
But he did have a lot of fun. And his three year old friend that we were with had a great time too.

For some reason the first exhibit you see is this huge hideous set of teeth (you probably can't see it, but the teeth have a little body with legs. Super weird). Max practiced his bass technique.

I find it a little creepy myself, but I guess this museum isn't all about me.


There was a big room filled with water stuff, faucets and floating things and currents and stuff, kind of standard kid's museum fare. Max liked it, but was ready to move on pretty quickly. His friend loved it and so we had to split up for a while. Max charged ahead to see what else there was. I could hardly keep up. As usual.


They had a big exhibit that was supposed to educate the kids about different periods in RI history, and the immigrants and all that. Max didn't quite get the point of it, but he did like driving the pretend boat.

And being the cashier in the super old little store.

But of course, he can't hold still for too long in a place like this. What if he missed something?

I think it was ingenious that they had a little area filled with fake rocks and Tonka trucks. That was a winner with Max and his friend. Probably if that'd been all there was at the museum the boys would've all been happy.

Another cool thing was this little road smushing machine. What are those called? Steam rollers maybe? Anyway there were little boys crawling all over this thing like ants. It was a big hit.

Can anybody tell me what the man of a thousand faces is thinking here?

Another exhibit was all about bones. Max thought he'd check out some x-rays. But of course the light didn't work.

They did have Kris's collarbone on display, which I thought was pretty cool.

They had a cool skeleton riding a bike. His bike was attached to a bike on the outside for the kids to ride. When Max pedaled the skeleton pedaled with him so we could see the way the bones all worked together. Max just couldn't figure out why the guy didn't have any skin. I don't think the bone articulations did much for him. But he was psyched there was a bike to ride.

He must've thought it was pretty cool because he stayed there longer than like 3 seconds.


My friend and I eventually got tired of chasing the kids through the museum, so we made them go outside into the garden. It seemed like a great idea until the three year old climbed up into the little fountain and got soaked. Then he climbed into a tunnel and got covered with dirt. So fun!
But they did have this really cool thing out there that was like a whole bunch of trash cans and different things that the kids could play with drumsticks. I think it was a really good idea, and it kept them busy for a little while.

I think this is one of the only pictures where I was able to get Max and his friend in the same shot. They're two very busy little dudes.


All in all it was fun. I'm sure we'll go back. I'm glad we got to go with my friend Bonnie though, it made it all so much more fun and less boring for me.
Max liked it a lot, but he was bummed there weren't a whole bunch of little cars like in the SLC museum. Oh well. There're reasons why they call it Zion I guess...

::NYC week 2 day 4::

Kris got a surprise day off on wednesday. This is really the reason why we came out to Brooklyn again. I figured Kris might end up with some random play time, and I wanted to spend it with him.
Anyway, we had a lot of ideas for what we wanted to do, but top of the list was to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We thought it would be perfect if we could bring Max in the jogging stroller--then he'd be stuck and he couldn't run all over. And since we were both going on the train there'd be one of us to carry the stroller and one of us to corral the boy.

Anyway, we were researching the museum and found out they allow all strollers except jogging strollers. Arrgh! Not only that, but Kris pulled out the stroller to take Max on a run, and it had two flat tires.
So anyway, we thought we could still try to take him to the museum, but it was a little daunting--considering that the word museum to him is currently associated with driving cars, running around and splashing in water....

We stopped downtown to have lunch. We almost decided that we'd just go to a movie instead, but on the way to a movie theater we ran across a BabysRUs. So we went in and bought a $20 umbrella stroller.
Sounds like the solution to the problem right? Well, only halfway. He's way way way too big for the umbrella strollers, and he has been for years.
Check out this picture.

Can you see that even with his feet on the floor his knees are almost touching his chin? He can basically stand up and walk while still strapped into the stroller, and he can definitely stop it just by putting his feet down. It's a frustrating experience.
We pushed on to the museum, which was a long hot sweaty exhausting train ride away.
We got there at about 3PM and started rushing through some exhibits because the place closed up at 5.

Here are the boys in the huge room with parts of a pyramid in it. The Egyptian stuff was really cool.
We got to look at some of the decorative arts. Check out this fabulous art deco grandfather clock, and the beautiful tiffany lamp.

They had a lot of tiffany glass--some lamps, some windows. It was beautiful.
Here's some inlay detail from a gorgeous table that I would like to have.

We got to spend a good amount of time in the modern art area. Of course they had some really cool and really famous stuff.
Kris likes this one.




This piece took up the whole wall. It was so cool! Just looking at the colors really made me feel good.



It was getting really close to 5, so we ran over to the musical instruments exhibit. It was really cool, but things were shutting down. We tried to go to the gift shop, or "store" I guess as they like to call it, but they kicked us out of there too! IT was very unceremonious.
Here's Max and I at the bottom of the huge stairs after getting kicked out. The line at the coat check area was huge! I'm looking a little peeved because I hate getting kicked out of stuff before I'm ready to leave.

Anyway, it was a great day, but I was already totally worn out from the day before with the children's museum. So I was wasted by the end of the day. We all were. Max wasn't great in the museum but he was ok enough that we got to see some stuff, and that's all we wanted.