Last Thursday I had the chance to take the kids downtown to the Seattle Children's Museum. The museum is currently hosting a Curious George exhibit and since my kiddos are totally obsessed with George I thought it would be a fun activity for them. The museum is filled with activities for children with everything from art rooms to mock retail stores, barber shops, and more then I can even remember. We arrived when it opened at 10:00am and to my surprise it was already packed! I wasn't anticipating such crowds. I later found out that it was mid-winter break for the Seattle School District. Normally I'm not a person who minds a crowd but when you're chasing two toddlers around (who by the way never wanted to play with any of the same toys) it's easy to get a nervous that you might loose one...and that's exactly what happened.
We made it through the first couple hours without incident. The children had a blast checking out all of the Curious George displays. The George area had a darling little mini golf ramp that Grant quickly attached himself to. In fact he liked it so much that when I insisted it was time to move onto another section he brought a piece of it with him. Grant carried the club and golf ball with to every place in the George exhibit. When it was time to leave, parting with the toy was difficult! We're talkin' the craziest tantrum that only a 2 year old is capable of. Lucky for me the museum has so much to do we were easily distracted by the Grocery Store next door.
As you can see from the pics Grant and Kinsley had a great time shopping together. We spent quite a bit of time here as the area was small enough that I could see both the kiddos from any angle. Kinsley spent most of her time at the scale and wasn't too happy with mommy when I snapped a picture of here there. Grant just thought it was fun to push the shopping cart around the the area, and would occasionally stop by the fish and bread aisle to fill up his cart. We took a lunch break after the store and ate upstairs with a few friends from our playgroup. We had classic tuna sandwich's. Kinsley hates tuna fish (at least right now anyway) so the night before when I was preparing our lunches for museum day and realized we didn't have anything but the little fish for sandwiches, I decided to get crafty. I cut the bread into the shape of teddy bears thinking I was so clever. Grant thought it was the greatest thing ever and Kinsley just turned her nose up at me. Eventually she gave in after I insisted that she couldn't have any grapes until she at least ate all the bears appendages. After lunch we headed back down to the museum for some more fun. I was already exhausted at this point but we had to pay $15.00 bucks to get in and I wasn't about to call it quits.
So off we went and the kids hung out on the sail-boat for a while and then wanted to head over to the big mountain for some camping and caving. Grant and Kinsley really liked the tent set-up in the area and spent a lot of time going done the slide. The area here is made to feel like your up on a mountain-side and it was super fun. I really wanted to take some pictures of the kids here but left my camera at the base of the mountain. With Grant in my arms I walked over to Kinsley who was in a little cave under my feet. She poked her head out of the hole and I told her it was time to come out so she could come with Grant and me to get the camera. Of course she protested but once I let her know we were coming right back she agreed. At that moment Grant wiggled his way out of my arms and went running to the slide. I ran the 3 feet to grab him and when I picked him up and turned back around Kinsley was gone. Thinking she had gotten a head start to the stroller I ran down toward the bottom of the mountain. I assumed that as soon as I rounded the corner I would see her there running right in front of me but she wasn't there. She wasn't at the bottom of the mountain, or at the stroller, or anywhere I looked. I ran around the museum as fast as I could and at a little over six months pregnant with an almost two year old on my hip, I guess I wasn't fast enough. At first all Grant wanted was down but once my emotions started getting the best of me Grant realized something wasn't right and start saying. "Where's Kiki, where Kiki." After a few minutes of panicked searching I ran to the front desk to get help. The staff at the museum was fantastic. Immediately they were repeating my description of Kinsley over their walkie talkies with other employees and within just a few seconds there were more staff member in my line of sight that there were children. At that moment a woman approached me and introduced herself as the director of the museum. She put her arms around me and told me not to worry and that they almost always they find the child within 30 seconds. After about two minutes went by I started to cry. All I kept thinking was "30 seconds, ahh it's been minutes and no Kinsley, where is she something must be wrong." The water works wouldn't stop at the point and finally after what seemed like forever a staff member called in saying they found her in the far corner of the Curious George exhibit. I had to wait up front while they brought her to me. As soon as she saw me she ran into my arms and said "Mommy I was looking everywhere for you, where were you?" I just hugged her and cried. As I held her tight I was more grateful for those little curls tangled in my hands then ever before. Kinsley told me that when she crawled out of the cave she thought I had already headed down to the stroller without her. What she didn't realize was that I was just 3 feet to her side picking up her little brother off the ground. In less than 5 seconds of lost eye-contact she was gone. We had a talk about staying in one place if we can't see mommy anymore and that mommy would find her instead of her looking for me. She agreed and said "I won't go the wrong direction again." Even though the kids were ready to start playing again we left shortly thereafter--I was done.
Later that night I decided to teach Kinsley our phone number. The kid can memorize anything within a few minutes so we came up with a little song to help her learn her phone number. My number ends in 7042 and so the song is supposed to end with "seventy forty-two." Deciding "seventy-forty-two" was just lame, Kinsley changed the songs ending to "seventy forty-tooth." Kinsley thought she was so clever and would laugh for almost five minutes every time she ended the song. Her laughter was contagious and so we spent our evening singing the phone number song and giggling the night away.
