Sunday, March 09, 2008

"Family Day" at the MIA

Once a month or so the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has "family day" and we finally took advantage today for the first time ever. It's a time when they have special kid functions throughout the museum that play in to the latest exhibit. Today the theme was "Cherry Blossoms and Cranes" and the focus was on Japanese art. You could watch a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, try your hand at folding origami and try to paint Japanese characters (our two did the latter).

With Marissa being partially potty trained and we not wanting to take a step backwards, she wore underwear today to the museum. I kid you not, I saw the inside of every bathroom on every floor that we visited. I believe we visited a bathroom a total of 5 times in the 1 1/2 hours we were there. I saw more toilets and sinks than I saw art.

It's not like you're going to say to her, "Marissa, I know you don't really need to go, you just want to play in the sink and see another bathroom." She would retaliate by looking you right in the face and peeing her pants right then and there, however little liquid she could conjure up. So off we traipsed at every request to find a bathroom to have her put two drops in the toilet.

The wide open spaces everywhere were very tempting to Lindsey and Marissa, who felt the need to race each other up and down every corridor, and play "peek a boo" around pedestals of scuptures.

Who knew that family day involved having three different security guards tell us that our kids need to "slow down?" Even at full speed they are barely doing a fast walk. And..ummm...isn't it family day? Who the hell cares? Everything's behind glass anyway, it's not like they're going to knock something over.

I want my kids to be comfortable in places like museums and libraries, but I think they are a few years off from visiting. Perhaps if I took Lindsey on her own she would behave herself better, but the two of them egg each other on.

I'm exhausted.

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