I indulged myself today and took Alex to the Museum of Ancient Life. Isn't it sad what qualifies as an indulgence for me these days? Though our original plans consisted of going to the park to play at the sprinkler pad with the mom's group, I just couldn't get excited about being outside, burning to a crisp in this god-awful heat all morning long. We do that every morning, and I desperately needed a break. I call this an indulgence because sprinkler pad at the park = free and museum with air conditioning = $$$. Luckily, for the next year he's still free admission to almost everywhere we go, so I only have to pay for myself. Turns out, it was well worth the $10 bucks. Both Alex and I had a wonderful time and we were there almost 3 hours!
The exhibits were all very impressive and informative which appealed to me and there were areas all through the museum geared towards little guys like Alex so he didn't get bored with all the displays. There was an area where kids could build their own dinosaur using huge stuffed legs, heads and tails and sticking them on a generic body. Kids could color, build wooden dinosaur skeletons, play with dinosaur puppets and plastic toys. The best part for Alex was the erosion table, a big pond filled with water, sand and plastic dinosaurs. The idea was to teach kids how water erodes the earth to form canyons and how mud slides can crush the dinosaurs and they become fossils. Alex just liked it because it was water and sand and toy dinosaurs. He played
and played
and played
He spent an entire hour in there before I had to drag him out (he had started throwing mud at people and wouldn't stop. Had he behaved himself, he could have probably spent the entire afternoon in there). Thank goodness for those aprons!
The T-Rex and giant turtle skeletons took his mind off of having to leave all the fun of the water and soon we got to the dig site, basically two sandboxes with dinosaur skeletons in them. Kids were given brushes to sweep away the sand and expose the bones. Alex's career as a paleontologist was cut short when he began to use the brush as a sand flinging tool.
It was just as well though, because it was past both lunch time and nap time. We ate lunch in the car and Alex zonked out before he could finish his Lunchable. It was definitely a morning well spent.
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