Date Night

I took Aid to Children's Museum to see their dinosaur exhibit. To say Aid was over the moon is a severe understatement. We were giddy all afternoon. I'm fairly sure Aid's giddiness had more to do with the dinosaurs then a date with mom, but I'll take what I can get!

He walked with utter amazement through the sky way like he had never before crossed it. We walked, no sprinted, in to find an empty museum. "Yes!" I thought. "We have the place to ourselves!" There were literally 5 other people in the entire museum. I know because we kept bumping into one another rejoicing over our kids' good fortune.

We only had an hour and a half. So I asked Aid if he wanted to hit the dinosaur exhibit first to make sure he got enough time there. Of coarse he did. We climbed the 3 flights of stairs back to back. Once we got to the top we saw it. The biggest dinosaurs you have ever seen. Aid got a new camera for Christmas. I asked him if he wanted to take pictures of the T-Rex that loomed in front of us. "No mama. He is roaring. Let's leave him alone." Huh. Probably pretty good advice at the end of the day.

We walked on. It's a pretty cool exhibit and just real enough to be a tad frightening. Aid walked quickly not wanting to crawl through any of the tunnels. He made his way to the dinosaur play table. It was riddled with dinosaurs. And he had it all to himself. We were at this table 80% of the time we were there.

Then we made our way to Aid's favorite part of the museum. The tadpole/frog/turtle water play area. We walked in. Not a single person was playing at the water. He looked up at me and gave me a mischievous grin and took off running to the area. He giddily collected all of the water creatures. And then it happened. A bouncy 20 something volunteer wandered over to his little collection. Grabbed one of the tadpoles out of it and began walking it down the rocky bank. Sigh. Here we go. Aid just stared at her. She continued playing with the tadpole while he gave her what I know to be the look of death. She then made the fateful mistake of trying to chase his shrimp. He tolerated it for a short time before his shrimp viciously tackled her little tadpole. I could see the surprise on her face. Trying to hide my amusement I gave Aid a firm lecture on not tackling her tadpole and about sharing.


Out of desperation to shake his tadpole partner, Aid shouted, "Mom let's go back to the dinosaurs!" At which point, bouncy volunteer responded saying, "Great idea! I haven't seen that exhibit yet!" "Oh Boy....," I thought. She followed him in and grabbed one of the perfectly placed dinosaurs. Aid in his most polite voice said, "Would you please put that dinosaur back please?" She complimented him on being so polite and continued to try and chase his dinosaur with the one she had picked up. He asked again. She responded that the dinosaurs really belonged to the Children's Museum, and that it was sharing with him." You're right lady, all true. But geez. Cut the kid a break. While sharing is something every kid needs to work on can't you just let him have his free reign for the last 20 minutes and go find another kid to follow around?

The museum was closing so we had to go. It wasn't exactly the date that I had anticipated. But it was a date with my little boy. There were no babies. No split attention. True, there was a horribly annoying volunteer; but if there is one thing that I have learned it's that life is gonna throw you the curve ball.

And you just gotta dodge it and keep on going.