Sunny Overstimulation

 This morning we took all of our kids to the Children’s Museum in downtown Phoenix.  My kids had never been to a children’s museum before, and as Silje is sort of reaching the upper age limit, I figured that this might be the last year that we’d have opportunity to take all the kids.

 Since we had 4 adults and 5 kids, I instituted the buddy system before we even left the house.  Knut and David were buddies.  Papa and Elias were buddies, and Solveig and Grammy were buddies.  My buddies were Silje and Ingrid.  It was crazy in there, so I’m glad we did that because there was no way I could keep my eyes on all 5 of them.  We stayed as a group sometimes, but as each kid had their own favorite activities, it was nice to have the ability to split up as well.

 They had some really neat art there, like this wall of CDs.  Actually, most of the stations had some beautiful artistic element to them.

 When you first walked in, there was this huge climbing structure.  Knut got a kick out of the description saying it had the “perception of risk” that kids need.  It was designed to give kids the idea of what it might be like to climb a tree, without any of the risk of climbing a tree.  This was a fun activity, but it made my heart a little sad to think that this might be some kids only experience “climbing a tree.” I suppose out here in the desert the only trees to climb have all these pesky needles.

 Solveig’s favorite activity was absolutely the state of the art play kitchen.  Everything was just mini-sized and she was able to make some of her favorite meals.  There was felt food there to create your own pizza, and even a “wood burning” pizza oven to bake it in.  It was really neat in there!

 I was really surprised that Silje didn’t get into the art room more than she did.  They had this rocket with thousands of layers of paint on it.  The kids got to take their own bucket of blue paint and paint over it as much as they wanted.  Even though the museum is for kids ages 1-10, I felt like there wasn’t enough there that interested Silje who is turning 9 this summer.  There were some cool things, but the first little bit, I think she felt it was a baby place.  I think it is a bit more pre-school centered in it’s opportunities.

 Elias sure liked it, though!

 Solveig got to make a little St. Patrick’s Day crown as well.  Grammy started writing her name on it, but Solveig wrote over it because Grammy was doing it wrong.  🙂

 David’s favorite part was the tubes with air blowing through that you could control with different valves that would send these handkerchiefs flying at blazing speeds through the tubes.  There was also a pretty intense race car run where you had to climb to the top and set your car running, and then run to the bottom to get another car.

 Silje finally found her niche in the market place.  She was organizing the daylights out of that place and having a blast.

 I got a kick out of all the stroller parking lots outside of the stations.