Yesterday, we ventured to the Sloan Museum in Flint to visit their Bug’s World exhibit. They have 5 gigantic (40-120 times their actual size), animatronic bugs on display. Our main goal, though, was to bring together two toddlers who have missed each other dearly.
Our son normally spends weekdays with his incredible sitter and her granddaughter. Since I have been off for a few weeks now, these two little buddies have not seen each other in a while. His buddy is old enough to form rudimentary sentences, and she frequently asks for baby by name.
So, we planned a play date today for the cute little couple to see each other and some giant bugs. As soon as we got out of the car in the parking lot, it was obvious how much these two missed each other. She ran right up to our son’s stroller and he reached out for her immediately. PRECIOUS.
We entered the Museum, saw the big, moving bugs and wandered around the other exhibits. Once again, they had a really fun play area for kids about halfway through the museum. It was set up like a little grocery store and a cute kitchen. Baby’s ‘date’ is about 20 months old, so she liked pushing around her little grocery cart and ‘buying’ her items. Baby loved pushing around a toy walker and running into things. Surprise.
The rest of the exhibit was Flint memorabilia, and a tad boring for the kids, but they only wanted to be near each other anyway. After the museum, we had a picnic undersome big shade trees, thankfully, as it was almost 90 degrees outside. The babies continued to be attracted to each other like magnets while eating their lunches. Eventually it was time to part ways, but it was quite a fun day.
After our play date, we decided to try going to a movie. I know, I know, baby is far too young for such things, but we really wanted to see Finding Dory, and I had done some recon work. I used to work at a pretty busy movie theater for about 5 years, so I know how annoying a crying baby can be to the other paying customers in a theater, and I was not about to let my baby cause anyone’s Dory experience to be sub-par.
Luckily, I knew of another theater location that is usually somewhat slow during the weekday matinees, and I also happen to know the GM: my best friend of 16 years. She told me what the slowest show time has been for the movie. With extremely low expectations, we got tickets and settled in. Baby had fallen asleep and was out until the previews started.
He didn’t like the loudness of the theater, that’s for sure. He clung to me like he was in grave danger. After about 10 minutes, he got restless, but never cried. The rest of the movie, my husband and I just shared duties walking up and down with baby and watching the movie from the edge of the auditorium, hidden from view by the stairwell. It is definitely not something we will try again for a long time, but we saw the whole movie and he never cried! Win?