Tacoma Children's Museum

Jacob and I are out of town visiting a dear friend in Washington on a very abbreviated trip. With 14 month old Jacob and my friend's almost 3 year old and new born, the Tacoma Children's Museum seemed like an amazing and appropriate place to visit. 

It was pretty stinking awesome. 

There is no entrance fee. The attendant at the door explained they are the first museum of its kind to offer a "pay what you can" entrance. There is no required or even suggested donation. Whatever you can afford, you cough up. I figured $10 sounded appropriate, so that's what I gave. Children are encouraged to touch, play and explore but parents must stay nearby. Children running amok is frowned upon. Adults must be accompanied by a child otherwise childless adults are escorted into the museum by an employee. I learned this from ear hustling when a lady said her sister was already inside with the kid. Very nice touch. 

Five minutes in and I decided this place was pretty nifty. There were so many places to explore and things to play with. There were stairs to climb, wood blocks, knobs, buttons, and levers to touch, windows to look through, puzzles to complete, and bridges to cross. There were animal wings to put on and capes to wear. There was a room devoted to creating art - painting, stamping, drawing. But the piece de resistance was the water exploring section. There were several large basins and tables filled with water, some connected with flowing waterfalls, and a gazillion different toys to play in the water with. There were blocks you could rearrange to play with water current. There was a wall with levers that could change the angle of slats underneath falling water. There were balls and strainers and funnels and toys and fountains. Jacob was in heaven. Surprisingly he didn't get very wet either. 

After spending quite some time at the water tables we moved on to an indoor grassy area and a huge magnet wall. Jacob's inner engineer was enjoying arranging magnetic pipes around a huge board and then having ping long balls get dropped through them to see what they would do. We finished out our visit with a stop at the small cafe where I was able to buy two bottles of water for $1.64. 

I was definitely impressed with the museum and would visit many times over if I was nearby. Not only was I impressed with museum setup, I was also impressed with the children visitors. I didn't see very much pushing or yelling or running. I don't think I heard a single tantrum. And I'm pretty sure I only saw one child whose parental representation wasn't clearly noticeable. But she was older and one out of several dozen ain't bad. The museum attendants were available but also hands-off. Children were truly allowed to explore and discover on their own. 

Enjoy some blurry photos. There wasn't much break in movement. 

Tie Chair Project - Done!

Oh my gosh! Look what I just made!

No, not the kid. I made that a while ago. I mean the tie-back chair thingy. This is one of those projects where I see something, decide I really want it, and then balk at the price and say to myself, "You can totally make this." Usually those projects are in various states of completion: either as ideas in my head or, more commonly, as projects that I've purchased items for but haven't found the time (let's be honest here) motivation to start, or as projects I have started but got bored frustrated with and haven't finished. This one I completed in record time! It took me all of an hour to do this. 

Here's the inspiration: 

It's called the Tie Chair. I originally saw it on Babysteals.com but it was like $40 or something. Gah! For $5 of fabric strategically sewn together?!? And that's supposed to be half-off retail. They also have them on Amazon for about $45. It seems handy but I was concerned about the kid just sitting on the chair itself. High chairs sit higher up than regular chairs so the child can reach the table. If a small kid (like mine all are) is sitting on a regular chair, I doubt they'd be able to properly reach the table. Plus I'd be cautious about using this somewhere like a restaurant until my kids can reach the table because I definitely don't want them putting food on the chair and eating off of that. Besides the price, these are the other reasons I hesitated. But I've found myself a few times caught without some kind of seating restraint device and thought, man, that tie chair thing would have come in handy. Especially when the kids are visiting someone's home that doesn't have spare high chairs laying around. Another bonus to this thing is that it's packable (like I need one more thing to carry in my suitcase of a diaper bag, but still...) With Sofia we had one of those portable high chairs that fold onto itself that we just kept in the car so we had it if we needed it. We didn't use it a ton so, unfortunately for it, that travel chair was one of the things we tossed after Sofia no longer needed it. Since the double stroller takes up my entire car, I really don't have room for a travel high chair, let alone two. 

So I found some awesome fabric my mom gave me. Who knows where she got it from. White and blue stripes with pigs wearing suit jackets and ties reading Hog Law out of opened briefcases. My heart would not be broken if this project does not turn out and I had to toss the fabric. However, if I was successful, Hello! Suit wearing pigs with briefcases! Amazing! I sketched out all the pieces I thought I'd need and how it should all be assembled. Seemed easy enough. A pillowcase type piece for the chair back and a t-shaped crotch strap that could wrap around the chair to tie. I cut all the pieces out last night and once the kids fell asleep for their nap today, I sewed everything together. Assembled the crotch strap, attached it to the bottom of the chair back piece, sewed the chair back piece together and voila! 

Thomas seems to like it! 

The straps are long enough I can wrap them around twice and tie them in the back, like in the photos with Thomas, or I can just wrap once and tie in front like above. 

If I strategically fold it up, I can wrap the straps around and it is even more packable than I thought it would be! My favorite part.

Here's a photo next to a ten ounce bottle for comparison. 

If you really want to know how I put it all together... Here's my sketch. Since this was technically a prototype, when I make these again I am going to make the chair back portion bigger to allow for larger chairs. I have no idea if there is a somewhat standard chair back width, so I just used my kitchen chairs as a guideline, but there isn't a whole lot of wiggle room to use this on a wider chair. I believe the actual Tie Chairs have a 26" chair back width, which seems huge to me, but they have ties on the back to tighten the chair back to the exact width of the chair. Smart... Would have been smarter of me to do some research BEFORE sewing this so I could have tried that the first time. Oh well. 

End of Summer Fun-filled Saturday

For nearly the past week, Adam has been out of town. A good college friend is getting married but unfortunately we can't make it to the wedding so Adam did the next best thing - go to the bachelor party. It isn't so much a party as a getaway. Three days fishing in the Florida Keys. Insert a fair amount of envy here. Which means its just me and the kids. Thankfully I have an amazing group of friends who have pitched in taking Sofia to and from preschool and watching the boys while I go to work. You guys are amazing. So this weekend I was hoping to really spend some time with Sofia and the boys. So far it has started out great. 

Sofia acted as my live alarm clock this morning, climbing into bed at 7 am and promptly asking if she could play a game on my phone. Sure, why not, it's Saturday. So we stayed in bed a bit until both boys woke up. Then it was French toast for breakfast and getting ready to start the day. I had plans to meet some friends for lunch but first I wanted to get my eyebrows threaded. Sofia loves going to the eyebrow place with me. I think it's because I usually let her play on my phone so she'll stay quiet and sit still. Plus it's at a shopping center with a Cornology around the corner so it's a good excuse to buy popcorn to treat ourselves. Which we did. Cheddar popcorn this time. Sofia's pick. 

We decided to go to downtown Martinez for lunch with our friends, which was perfect because there was a car show going on. Although the lunch itself could have been better (less than stellar service and average food), walking around the car show afterwards was pretty awesome. I personally feel like my car is just a thing to get me from point A to point B so I have never been too particular about my own car, but I LOVE looking at all the work people put into restoring older cars, especially american cars. Everything is so clean and shiny. They just don't make them like that anymore, do they?? Sofia was smitten with this amazing pink car, a Cadillac maybe? She took a photo in front of it and then told the man who was fixing something in the front seat, "you have a really pretty car." Adorable. 

Then we ran over to pick up my friend/coworker to go to a tomato festival. We had originally wanted to get together and maybe go for a walk or go to a park or something. Then I got a postcard in the mail that Smith Family Farm in Brentwood was having a San Marzano/Heirloom Tomato Festival. My family has been going to Smith Family Farm for years to get tomatoes for our annual sauce making. Vickie was down for some fun farm times so we drove out there to catch the tail end of the festival. I had never been so I wasn't sure what to expect. Although it was a small festival, I would go again. 

By the time we got to the farm, Sofia is about three hours past due for a nap, but she did surprisingly well. She had the most fun running through this hay bale tunnel. She would have just kept running circles through that thing all day if we had the time. She also got to dig for earthworms, make a herb bouquet, watch bees make honey, pet a donkey and check out a replica Miwok Indian village. Surprisingly she said one of her favorite parts was the Quiet Area, a small zen garden with a cute little fountain and a stone labyrinth. It was very peaceful. Had time and children allowed, I would have enjoyed sitting and listening to the band play. I'm not sure who was playing when we were there, but there was this nice bluegrass trio that must have done the entire Oh, Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack. That's my favorite movie, by the way. 

The day was ended with ginormous Starbucks iced teas and having kids that were so far past their expiration dates that all three went to sleep without a fight. Sure they were dirty, but they weren't crying! 

I didn't think about grocery shopping or laundry or running errands once today. I just enjoyed being with my friends and family. It was glorious. 

Tomorrow the only thing on the agenda is a birthday party, but who knows what other kinds of adventures we can squeeze in. 

Gorgeous, both of you. 

That dog has sunglasses on! 

A hay maze, even though it only only one entrance/exit. 

I'm surprised she didn't ask me to buy this scarecrow. She kept going up to it and staring at it. She even gave it a hug at one point. 

The quiet area. 

Doing our best scarecrow impersonations.