Children's Museum of Richmond

Swim class was cancelled this weekend, and the weather was beautiful, so we hit the road to check out the Children's Museum of Richmond. Long-time readers of this blog may remember when we went to the Short Pump annex of the museum (see blog post here), but this weekend we tried out the central location in downtown Richmond.

Simply put, we had a blast. It's the perfect place for 3-5 year olds, and so much better than the National Children's Museum. We were there almost 6 hours. Here's the photo recap.

We started in the barn area, which is just for kids 3 years old and younger. Deacon loved it.

It was then on to the apple picking station. If we came here and just did this, Piper and Fletch would have been happy. They did this for about 45 minutes. You "picked" apples from the tree and then put them down a chute inside the tree and they get shot back into the holes to be "picked" again.

After that, we headed over to the pretend diner. Fletch loved it here. Piper did too, but I think Fletch may have culinary aspirations.

After pretending to eat a fine meal, Piper took a ride on the indoor merry-go-round. Every kid gets one free ride on the weekend. Fletch isn't crazy about carousels, so he declined.

Piper then ventured over to the awesome art studio. It's a really cool space, with tons and tons of art supplies for kids to use. While doing this, Fletch played in the pretend car shop (not pictured).

After all this, it was time for lunch. Unfortunately, there aren't many dining options nearby, so Eric walked across the parking lot to pick up food from McDonald's, and we had a picnic at the tables out front.

Once we were refueled, we headed back inside to play with the tubes exhibit, which had air flowing through them and kids could put scarves and balls into the tubes and watch them fly out the other end.

You know you've been in DC too long when you see this series of tubes and say, "Oh hey, look. It's the Internet."

Don't worry, we didn't lose Deacon in the tubes. He was sitting beside me on a bench enthralled with his own toys.

Around the corner from the tubes was the "town square," which was a series of exhibits of various places around town, including a market, hospital, bank, school, etc. Here are Piper and Fletch on camera at the TV station.

While we were at the tubes exhibit, we heard drum music playing at the front of the museum and saw a crowd gathering. Turns out there was an African dance troupe performing for Black History month. Piper and Fletch loved the music. 

Check out their moves in this video.

After cutting a rug for a bit while Deacon had a bottle, Piper and Fletch put on their on show in the pretend theater.

We then checked out the dinosaur exhibit. Sorry about the bad phone photo.

Those are all the pictures I have. The stuff not pictured that we also spent time at was the water table area, the archaeological dig, the dinosaur cave, the full-size ambulance, the face painting area (where Piper had a heart painted on her cheek), and the 3-story treehouse with slide. We also spent about 45 minutes playing in the "backyard" where they have ride-on toys, huge musical instruments, a little playhouse, and a big sandbox.

As you can see, we did a ton of stuff, and it was all just so perfect (spitx3). One of my favorite parts of being a mom is watching the joy on their faces at places like this and watching them hang out with other kids. As we put Piper and Fletch to bed last night (where they practically fell asleep before their head hit the pillow after such a big day), I thanked them both for such a fun day. Because while they were in heaven with so much to do, I was in heaven just watching them.