Hitting the museums in DC

First, a new trick that I've learned from my blogging buddy at work - adding a soundtrack to the blog. So please don't hesitate to click on the "play" button of the link below to get the sound system working.



Since it was pretty darn hot today (but luckily not too humid), we decided that it was a good day to take advantage of some of the museums in DC. Our arrival at the Mall area coincided with Maggie's naptime, so we decided to start at a museum for the adults, the Freer Gallery of Art which specializes in Asian art. Despite our expectations, Margaret didn't crash immediately upon our arrival, and her vocalizing (which really was nothing given her skills at fussing) led some evil woman to give me the stink eye in one of the rooms before she reversed direction and headed to another room. I was so perturbed that when Maggie fell asleep shortly thereafter, I insisted on trailing the woman and her friend for a while, trying futilely to give dirty looks back at her, even though it involved retracking our steps through a few rooms. I'm sure that in my pre-kid days, I may have rolled my eyes upon seeing infants, especially if they were near me on an airplane. But now I'm much more sensitive to slights from non-baby people when my kid is doing nothing but practicing her "talking" for pete's sake.
Despite the heat, when Maggie woke, we wandered around the Mall for a bit checking out the sights especially the Folklife Festival where we got to see lots of musical performances ranging from bluegrass to southeast Asian music, all of which the kid loved, leading her to stare, point and occasionally dance. At this point, her dancing involves fairly arrhythmic bouncing and head bobbing along with the music, but it will get better, and she certainly has the appropriate level of enthusiasm.

We then braved the crowds by heading to the big kahuna of museums on the Mall, the Air and Space Museum. From childhood trips to DC, my recollection of the Air and Space Museum, corroborated by a guidebook that we have, is that lots of the displays are woefully out of date (e.g. "Someday Man might walk on the moon!") While some of that still existed (e.g. "Aircraft in the 1980s" accompanied by great photos of people with lovely 1980s hair), the museum is pretty neat. The big front rooms with all of the rockets and planes, along with the descriptions of the "space race" between the USA and the USSR (we won!), are fascinating. At some point, I turned to Abby and said, "You know, this is pretty darn cool." And the whole place is big enough that despite the masses of humanity that the museum draws (apparently, the highest attendance museum in the world), it doesn't feel too crowded, and Margaret had lots of room to roam (within reason).All in all, a great day. Really makes me realize how great it is to live in DC and be able to hit wonderful museums on a whim. In the end, though, the best part of the day from Maggie's point of view probably occurred when she was able to beat the heat by playing in sprinklers in front of a big federal office building. Such fun....