A new toy

We went to Baltimore today to hit the aquarium there. (Maggie and I went to the DC aquarium in the basement of the Dept of Commerce a week or so ago. Frankly, it was a huge disappointment for me. Too small, no really big or interesting fish, etc. But we were warned by all of the guidebooks which say: "Go to the aquarium in Baltimore since the one in DC is a letdown." Margaret did have fun in the DC aquarium, running around and pointing at all of the interesting sights, but I was bored.) We thought that a trip to Baltimore was a good idea since it was high time we went to that city to see the "rebirth" of the inner harbor area and, more importantly, to beat the heat since it was horribly hot and humid in DC.

Unfortunately, lots of other people had the same idea, so we would have had to wait for a substantial amount of time to get in unless we were willing to fork over a substantial sum to become members. Tempting as that was, we decided that the aquarium wasn't in the cards for the day. Which led to some fussing about having driven so far, getting stuck in traffic and so on without doing anything in the end except standing in the heat in Baltimore harbor. Margaret and Abby, on the other hand, were handling things pretty well.

While looking for parking after arriving in Baltimore, we spotted something called Port Discovery, the kids museum of Baltimore. A fortuitous sighting since we headed there after deciding not to wait for the aquarium. And, boy oh boy, did Maggie have a blast. She walked in and froze, apparently stunned by the chaos that she was witnessing. Port Discovery is a three story museum in an old warehouse with a big netted climbing thing in the center. Margaret was too young for that, but it looked right up the alley of the Philly cousins (although I had to wonder how often kids got stuck and started panicking in certain parts of the netting - I'm sure the people working there have some unbelievable stories.) But other parts of the museum were great for her. And kids of all ages everywhere! Running, yelling and fiddling with everything while parents followed close behind admonishing them to behave, watch out for the baby, slow down, etc. Margaret conked out almost immediately after we left, completely exhausted by all of the stimulation. Our introduction to kids' museums which, I have to say, appear to be pretty cool since you don't have to worry about social graces at all. My kid's nose is all snotty? That's ok, so is yours. My kid is yelling? Someone else will surely be louder. (We tried to hit the kids' museum in DC a month or so ago which ended with Maggie and me wandering around a somewhat sketchy neighborhood north of Union Station in the heat ago only to discover that the kids' museum here is closed until 2008.)

By the way, I heard calls to at least one Maggie and one Margaret while we were there so our old-fashioned name might be catching on.

But the key piece of entertainment for this post is the following movie. We got a new toy from our relatives in Shaker Heights after their college visit to Abby's alma mater, Dartmouth. Both Maggie and Maddie think that it's a blast. You really need to pay attention at the end of this video when Maggie starts to dance. Alas, I started to laugh and had to stop filming, so I didn't capture all of her cavorting. Abby has harangued me repeatedly for my failure as a filmmaker, but it's still pretty funny.


(Here's the attempt to upload the same video directly to Blogger. We'll see whether this works better than YouTube.)