Children's Museum

We are so fortunate to have the best neighbors.  Our neighbors who live two houses down have three children who are such great playmates for our younger kids.  Our older girls have been their babysitters for years. It is charming to see the kids move back and forth between our houses, setting up elaborate pretend play themes.  Sometimes they play house. Many times they produce theatrical productions that seem to have several continuing acts or chapters.  These acts evolve over weeks of play. There is a high comfort level among the kids at each others homes.  Little Tyler will check out our refrigerator to see if there's anything worth snacking on; my kids will wander over to ding their doorbell at the crack of dawn (or at least try to before we catch them in their tracks).

Last Friday we all went to the Appleton's children's museum, The Building For Kids, and had such a great time. 

Here's Teresa, Morgan and Lauren cooking up something in the restaurant...

Aidan, Lauren, Tyler and Morgan manning the air traffic control in the cockpit...

Tyler and Molly Grace

Captain Aidan

Erin was completely enchanted by the entire day.  She went shopping...

She played musical instruments...

She pondered her smallness in contrast to the grand universe....

And when she came up missing, we found her reading books.  (I should have known!)...

Seamus was content in the stroller.....

For about 2.5 seconds.....

In light of Seamus and Erin's needs to run, climb and hide, I corralled them into the toddler jail play area while my friend Debbie took the older kids to various fun places.  The toddler area had short walls surrounding it, which the little two did not even contemplate scaling.  That would be because there was no place on the planet that they would rather be at that moment....

There were big, plush three-dimensional shapes to climb on...

There were chairs set up near tables filled with toys and puzzles...

And last but not least, there was an iiiiiide (slide) for Erin.  At the top of the wide stairs she climbed (in order to reach the slide) was a gigantic carrot.  Erin would sign carrot when she got to that point, which is probably my second most favorite sign she does (it is done by pretending to hold a carrot in your hand while taking a bite.  Erin makes a giant crunchy bite sound when she makes this sign.  It's cute.)  The giant carrot was follwed by the best part of all: sliding down the celery.  I don't know the sign for celery, but Erin enjoyed sliding down it about six dozen times...

It was interesting that with the exception of one cute little boy, we had the toddler area to ourselves.  That one cute little boy's name was Seamus!  Not a common name.  I had a good time talking to the other Seamus' mom.

So, after a few more interesting exhibits and lots of time spent in the art center, we packed up and headed home. Thank you, Pagel gang, for such a fun day!