Ragged

So.

Left the house (late!) at 12:15, drove down to the Science Center in order to participate in their Homeschool Days (see schedule here). On the way, David suddenly shouts, "Mom! I fink I need frow up!" Ack, ack, ack!! So I go rocketing off an exit ramp which happens to have a wide shoulder, and pull over and slam on the brakes, and hit the button to open the van door. David unbuckles his seat belt and sort of slithers out the door. I head around the van to his side and watch him as he takes big, deep breaths of the cool outside air. The melting snow has creating a little sparkly puddle in front of us, and the air smells like mud and warm, brown grass. Nearly Spring. David looks at me hopefully and says, "Hey! Now I fink I don't need to!" He probably overheated and with my luck, has my propensity for motion sickness. Still, I handed him a plastic bag from the backseat and he was under strict orders for the rest of the trip.

We got there, collected our tickets, and I took him to the meeting place, where there were probably around 25 kids waiting. After dropping him off, I took Lauren over to the Discovery Room, where we played with race cars, tried out some instruments, rolled balls down ramps, looked at bugs through microscopes, petted a four-inch Brazilian Hissing Cockroach (I'm SO glad those things don't live under my fridge, let me tell you!), ground dried corn into maize, poked at a life-sized, plastic skeleton, and looked at dead and dried butterflies.

This still left us with 45 minutes to kill, so we managed to wander a little bit. We even found a penny press that would squash a penny and put an image on a butterfly on it, which Lauren thought was grand, so we ran one through the machine. We also spend an inordinate amount of time looking at the life-sized, robotic T-Rex on the lower level, which caused Lauren no end of angst. Was it real? What had it done to that Triceratops? It was moving. It was real, wasn't it? How does it eat blood? Why is it that color? And so forth. I finally dragged her into the gift shop to make her look at something else for the remaining 15 minutes.

We went back to pick up David, who was in the middle of helping to build a six-foot arch made of vinyl-covered blocks. I asked him how it'd gone and he replied, "I don't want to tell you."
"What? Why not?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Oh. Well, they have lots more of these classes, and if I don't know if you like it or not, I don't know if I should sign you for more."
"Oh, definitely!"
"It was worth it? You had a good time?"
Vigorous nodding.
OK. Fine.

I waited a while.
"You know, I saw that arch you guys were building. It got knocked down, I bet those guys got in LOTS of trouble for that!"
"Oh NO," he says. "We builded it and knocked it down lots, and once I did it and nobody else did, and some of those blocks fell on the teacher's head, and that made me laugh! And I tried to make a circle with toothpicks and marshmallows, but then I got tired of that, and...." he prattled on happily. Good.

I took him to the gift shop, intending to show him the dinosaur school set I'd found (a ruler and pencils with dinosaurs on them), but then it happened. He spotted the Triceratops.

He already has the larger one, that's his beloved Triceratops, but this...this was a baby Triceratops! He freaked with joy, and cuddled the Triceratops to his shoulder. He loved him, he adored him, we HAD to take him home! Oh, look, there were TWO babies! Oh, could we take them both? I said no, he could only have one (which I thought was quite generous), and his eyes welled up with tears. But...but...he HAD to have two! No, I said, that baby dinosaur needed to stay here with his mommy. The one you have here is sad, because his mommy was sold without him, and he needs to be adopted. But the other one is quite happy here with his family. This was OK until we went to check out, and then he burst into tears again. But what if somebody ELSE came and bought the baby dinosaur? Then HE would be without his Mommy, too! "Oh no," I said, "I'm SURE he'll tell anybody who comes to buy him that he wants to be with his Mommy, just like he told me, and that person will buy BOTH of them. They won't get separated!" Well...he guessed that would be OK, even though it was hard to leave the other one. He opened the plastic bag and looked deeply into the glass eyes of his new friend. "I'm sorry your Mommy got sold," he said comfortingly, "But I'll take you home and take care of you."