Videos from the Children's Museum

As promised, here are the videos of Gavin in the water works exhibit and the "car wash."  Enjoy!

Weekend fun

During what is hopefully these last few weekends of "winter" (I know "Spring" starts soon according to the calendar, but in my opinion, its not spring until I can stop wearing my boots and gloves!), we have done whatever we can to get out of the house and entertain ourselves!  Last weekend, Ryan and Uncle Kyle took Gavin to Chuck E Cheese, and Gav had a blast!  He rode on the merry go round with some lady friends, helped Daddy and Uncle Kyle collect their winning tickets from skee-ball, took some pictures with Daddy in a car, and enjoyed some pizza!  (Daddy forgot that I packed the camera, but there are a few Chuck E Cheese provided pics that we'll scan onto the website soon!).

This weekend, Daddy had to get some work done, so Gavin and I headed out to the Kohl's Children's Museum.  We've been to the museum once before, but Gav was about 10 months old at the time and couldn't walk yet, so it wasn't all that fun then.  This time, Gav thought the museum was amazing!  The museum is really just a hands on place for kids to play pretend and learn through play.  Its very open, so Gavin can run around and choose what he wants to do next.  We started our day at the museum in the car exhibit:

Learning that the steering wheel moves the wheels (and also makes a super fun squeaky noise because the axel needs some grease!)

Gav probably spent 5 minutes just turning this wheel back and forth.  This gave Mommy some time to check her email at the museum :)

Trying to be gracious about sharing the car space (hey, Gav was there first!)

Cruisin 

In the "car wash," aka a tunnel with a bunch of strobe lights and tubes that blow air every which way.  Basically a baby disco.  Gav loved  this part of the exhibit.  There's video footage of this as well!

Gav sporting his "war paint" as one museum employee called it.  We actually visited the car exhibit twice, and this was on our return visit, after doing some face painting! 

Our next stop in the museum was the "Water Works" exhibit.  I'm pretty sure a water play area is mandatory in any children's museum.  Gavin loved the water exhibit in the children's science museum we went to in North Carolina, so I knew he would like this, but I didn't know that he would discover a new level of joy and cuteness over it:

Playing with the boats, and generally just enjoying the ability to splash (Note:  I forgot to say that smocks also seem to be present at every children's museum I've ever been to.  And I really love the work smock.)

This trip to the museum taught me that either you wear short sleeves, or you bring an extra shirt (at least until Gav gets a little taller!).  Gavins was absolutely soaked when we left this exhibit, so its a good thing we stayed another 2 hours afterwards to give him time to dry out!

"This is the best Mommy!"

Pure joy :)

A better of shot of Gavin's favorite part of the whole museum.  In this part of Water Works, when you press a button, it makes a water cannon shoot water through a series of pinwheels, thus spraying unsuspecting parents within a 5 foot radius.  We'll upload the video of this exhibit as well!

After the Water Works exhibit, we headed to the music exhibit.  Here Gavin is jamming out on the drums, and learning about vibrations by watching the confetti inside the drum jump.  Gav loved this part of the museum as well, and I'm surprised this is the only pic I took here.  I guess we were just too busy jamming out.  At one point, Gav and I joined in with another family on a set of drums to "The Ants are Marching..."

Our next stop was the Dominick's exhibit (the grocery store for you non-Chicagoans).  Gavin loves to transfer objects from one place to another, so picking out fake grocery items and putting them in his own little cart was pretty sweet.  He started off in the fruits and veggies section.  Here is he, testing the ripeness of the banana by flying it like an airplane.

Enough with the healthy stuff, time for some Bell!

Learning how to pump up and down in Cooperation Station (kids have to work together to accomplish a goal).  Here, as Gavin pumps, he is blowing up one of those giant inflatable columns like you see in front of a car dealership accompanied by a sign that says "DEALS DEALS DEALS!"  It was really neat to see Gavin grasp the concept of cause and effect and be delighted by his power to change his environment.

That's it for museum pics.  We did even more than I captured on film, and Gavin ran around the museum happily playing for 3 hours! (an amazing length of time for Gav to be interested in staying in one spot!).  Hopefully we tuckered this kid out enough to cancel out some of the sleep we're going to lose because of daylight savings time!  Look for videos of our museum trip in the next post!