So, life continues on as usual in the Urie household. Blessedly, the weather has started to cool down. And we are all very excited about this development! Yay blankies and sweaters!
THE REST OF THIS POST IS WRITTEN BY JONATHAN, who is the handsomest man in all the land:
I got done with work early today, so we decided to do a running start into our weekend and headed to the Museum of Science. Jill and the kids had given glowing reports all the times they’d gone and I was excited to experience first-hand all the things they did previously.
We started down in the dinosaur section. You can tell that this is a super cool place because Jill and the kids hadn’t ever made it down to the dinosaurs yet. The centerpieces of the section are a mostly complete triceratops fossil skeleton (named Cliff, incidentally) and a life-size Tyrannosaurus Rex model.
Next, we checked out a section dedicated to math in the real world. There were all sorts of exhibits about shadows, balance beams, perspective, scale, and periodic movement. It was a really cool section.
We then wandered over to the engineering/programming section and played with all the nerdy displays they have there. It did my programming heart good to see my children take to algorithm-building so fast.
We saw that there was a live animal show starting soon, so we got good seats at the little amphitheater. The kids were hoping that Pancake the rabbit would make another appearance (Evie was especially excited to see pancake again), but the show itself centered on a Boa Constrictor Imperator. While the snake was very cool, there was some disappointment that Pancake did not make an appearance.
After a while, the twins got antsy, so I took them over to the Charles River section that focused on both the natural and man-made aspects of the Charles River. There’s a little bridge building section, a water table and a few aquariums, among other things. The twins were delighted to play and had a great time waiting for the snake show to conclude.
The older kids soon joined us and everyone played in the water section and ate snacks.
We then headed over to the human body exhibit and explored there for a while. The exhibit area is all about the human body, it’s growth and development, as well as how it affects and is affected by the world around it. There are a whole bunch of interactive exhibits where you take quizzes or answer survey questions or perform small dexterity tests and you can see how you compare to other museum visitors. All of it is tracked through a wristband that has a barcode, so you can see your results when you get home. We found out that Jonathan is better at the balance test, but that Jill has more friends… not sure who’s winning there, but we learned something!
It should be noted that Isaac completely lost his mind in this section. I think that this whole nap/no-nap thing is really messing with his ability to regulate his feelings. We really hope we find a new equilibrium soon.
But after a good cry (and let’s face it, everyone needs a good cry now and then), we all got back together and watched all the presentations in the body theater. The seats were extremely comfortable (a rarity at the museum) and it fit our family perfectly, so we all piled out and watched mini documentaries about how cooking shaped evolution, how aggression works and why humans are awesome runners. Clara and I had just run our first 35 minute-long continuous running segment that morning, so we felt pretty cool watching that last one.
We then gathered our troops and headed back home.
