For Christmas last year, we received a membership to the Children’s Museum. I was very excited as we had actually never taken the children. I am such a horrible mother. Indianapolis is actually home to the number one children’s museum in the country. We have been several times now that we are members, and we will never be without a membership again.
Their current feature is The Power of Children. We’ve been through the exhibit twice and I hadn’t even seen a third of it. It looked incredibly fascinating and powerful (thus, the name). However, it’s not so much for children. My girls just couldn’t care at all. I joked that I wanted to visit the museum one day without them so we could finally spend some time with the things we enjoy. Our next date, C=Children’s Museum, was born.
We dropped the kidlets with MFJ and headed downtown. With the construction they still have going on at the museum, we ended up in the basement to start. We bypassed the dinosaurs—been there, done that. On our way up to The Power of Children, we stumbled on the 2nd reason for our no kids allowed trip, The Clone Wars exhibit. I’m sure Lorelai will love it, but she wouldn’t be as interested in the details and we would have missed a lot chasing her down in a dash towards the train exhibit.
The Power of Children exhibit was definitely worth the trip. We sat through all 3 presentations and while I’m not sure Spencer was all that into it, I thoroughly enjoyed them all. The Diary of Anne Frank is the only assigned book from junior high that I actually read cover to cover. Clearly, we learned no lessons as the hatred and racism continued in our country. The story of Ruby Bridges fascinates me. I just can’t get over how recently it was. I would love to think we’re beyond that, but 50 years later I still see it regularly. Ryan White’s story was familiar. I was young so I think I remember the movie about his story more than the actual news. I grew up here in Indiana, though, so it was a pretty big deal.
Our next stop was for the geeks in us (okay, mostly him). The games through the years exhibit is fun even with the whole family, but we never get to play when the girls are around. Someone is always taking over my joystick and losing my last life. It was a bit crowded so I still haven’t had the opportunity to play Giant Connect 4, but beating Spencer at Pac-Man was worth it. Since we were already there, I insisted that we ride the carousel. Without children to wrangle, I was able to read all the cute tidbits on the history of the carousel. It’s amazing how educational even the fun & games exhibit can be, but we really had a lot of fun being kids.
We capped off our date with a few minutes of relaxation in the basement. Of course, remember we’re at the children’s museum so that isn’t even remotely dirty! They have this rotating couch-like thing that looks up at the bottom of the Fireworks of Glass sculpture pictured above, which, by the way, was apparently created by a pirate. See? Educational.
