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. 

Three Milestones: The Good, the Bad, and the Mediocre

We had three milestones this week: one good, one bad, one mediocre.

The first (bad) milestone was that we all got stomach flu last weekend/week, including Deacon. That was a horrible experience that I hope to never repeat. We all took turns looking essentially like this.

The second milestone (the good) is that Deacon can now hold his own bottle. This was like the best milestone ever for Piper and Fletch because we spent so many hours of the day feeding them

The final milestone (the mediocre) is that naps are officially a thing of the past at home for Piper and Fletch. They just refuse to nap at home. For some reason, they'll still nap at school and with Eric's mom (must be those magical teacher powers) but then that usually means they stay up until 9pm fooling around in their room. In some ways, it's very freeing because we're no longer beholden to their schedule as we have been for the past 3 years. In other ways, it's exhausting because it means Eric and I don't really get a break, unless we put on a movie. They're watching Land Before Time right now, which is the only reason I've been able to write this post in one sitting. Thankfully, Deacon is still a great napper. He's asleep right now after a morning workout at the pool and pumping some weight with his bottle.