The Children's Museum, Part B

So, last Monday I decided, with news of my impending employment, that our time was better spent playing with each other and spending money while we could instead of frugally trying to stay home all day or just go to the park and the library and swim in the back yard.

I have to preface this by saying that the only memory I have of the Houston Children's Museum was a faux grocery store, and so I kind of balked at the fact that it was going to cost me $7 for each of us to get in and $7 to park (assuming I stayed more than 3 hours, which at $7 a head I was going to.)


But holy moly was that place great.

I made the initial mistake of allowing him to turn off at the first exhibit instead of going to the one that reaches capacity first, and in doing so, we never did get into that exhibit - since you can't pull a 2 1/2 year old away from something fun to stand in line. Or, I guess you can, but you and all the other people in line will regret it. So we still have a pretty good section that we didn't even get to see.

One of the first things he found was a maze thing where you use 2 cranks to move a wooden square holding a ping pong ball over holes in a board to drop to deliver the ball to any given hole. Actually I think the goal is NOT to have the ball drop through the holes, but for a 2 year old I think dropping it in the holes is a better goal. Whatever, I'm making up my own rules here, who's gonna call me on it?

We probably could have spent the entire 5 hours there. But we moved on.


The water area was neat - if very wet.



They had this part where they have pipes like the PVC pipes he has at home, except when you make a pipe structure and stick it on the one in the water it will actually spit water out the end of your pipe- which is way cool. Or at least I thought so, he thought the balls that floated and the boats were more interesting.



There were several places set up to give puppet shows, and he did just that at each one.


There were some awesome building blocks that I should have taken a picture of the name of because I totally want some. For him, you know, not that I need a fort or anything, but I know exactly where I...I mean, he could build one in the guest room, you know...for him.




In the invention area we made a rocket, a race car, and a paper airplane. Here he is seriously setting off our rocket.

We stopped for lunch, um who eats their corn dog this way?

And we spent some time in the toddler area, which was pretty boring and we decided to go back to get as wet as we possibly could before we left. Or at least that was his plan, it sure wasn't mine.

Our only issue came when I tried to make him use the potty every 90 minutes. So it might not be the best place to go while potty training, but it was still fun none the less, and the bathrooms had electrical plugs that a person could recharge her camera battery for the 3 or 4 minutes she was in there if that person had forgotten to charge it before leaving the house and if it kept dying on her...if you know anyone like that. Ahem.

All in all, I give the Children's Museum of Houston 2 thumbs up. And I think the $7 entry fee for everyone over 1 is totally worth it. Although - I think a person needs to be 2 1/2 or so to actually enjoy the exhibits just because they do take some fine motor skills, otherwise you might as well go to the mall and play on the indoor playground.