Museum of Play

We are in Rochester for a conference and Nicholas is getting a bonus visit with his Uncle Mike and Aunt Melinda. They are babysitting the two mornings we both need to be at the conference, which is a huge help. And this afternoon Nicholas and I went with them to the Museum of Play, which is awesome!

Nicholas had a great time and found tons to do, even though there were lots of things he was way too young for. I am glad we came now instead of a few weeks ago, though, because being an independent walker made it a lot more fun for him.

There was a whole Sesame Street section, where Nicholas walked around going "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo, Elmo." He couldn't even play with anything in that section because he couldn't sit still long enough. He was a boy on a mission.

From 2010 July

After we pried Nicholas away from the various Elmos, we went "shopping" at the mini play Wegmans. (Yes, because it is Rochester the play grocery store is a Wegmans.)

I don't think Nicholas understood the imaginative element, since he didn't focus on foods he likes, but he definitely understood that he was supposed to push the cart around, take things off shelves, and put them in the cart.

Here he is adding some cans of "Manwich" to his full cart:

From 2010 July

And checking to make sure he has enough Pedialyte before moving on:

From 2010 July

In the rest of the museum there were also trains to watch, toy trucks, blocks, a piano to play, stairs to work on climbing, a magnetic giant Mr. Potato Head, and so much more.

One of Nicholas' favorite things was a ramp to race toy cars. He spent a lot of time refusing to use it the "right" way, instead pushing the cars up the ramp and then walking them back over to the bin at the bottom and dropping them in. But then something clicked when Uncle Mike showed him and the two of them dropped cars from the top over and over and over again. And giggled.

From 2010 July

From 2010 July

We spent a total of over 3 hours at the museum and Nicholas was walking almost the entire time and playing hard! That in and of itself would have been exhausting, but he also missed his afternoon nap. So I wasn't surprised when he slept the whole way back to Mike and Melinda's. I was however surprised when he immediately went back to sleep once we got to their house.

After a nap and dinner we had another treat in store for Nicholas. Ice cream! Or as Nicholas refers to it, "nummy nummy." The ice cream stand we went to had free "baby cones" for anyone shorter than the counter, so Nicholas got a small ice cream cone all to himself. We ended up dumping it into a cup and feeding him with a spoon to prevent it from ending up all over the ground. But when the ice cream was gone I let him chew on the cone to stall him while we finished our ice cream. Here he is working on the cone:

From 2010 July

Pretty soon after this picture was taken Nicholas started handing me his cone to dip it in the melted ice cream left in the bottom of the bowl. By the end of the process his cone was a wet, flat mess.

But nummy nummy indeed.