The Children's Museum

Since Melody already had the day off of work, Eric decided to take today off too, and we all headed down to the Children's Museum. We'd been wanting to go for awhile, but wanted to make sure Cate was really old enough to enjoy it. Turns out she's at the perfect age to begin enjoying all that the museum has to offer and it doesn't look like she'll be outgrowing it anytime soon.

We started the day off in the Little Sprout area- made just for kids 4 and under. And within this area, there's an area just for crawlers. Cate had fun playing there.

We soon ventured out of the crawler area though. Where Cate discovered a new friend (sort of).
Then she got busy crawling around to check everything else out.
Mommy introduced her to sand at one of the big sand tables. She'll be ready for Hilton Head this summer for sure.
Cate never ceases to amaze us with how quickly she picks up on things. Right away she learned that the felt shapes stuck to the giant felt board.
And she loved maneuvering the boats and cars on this wooden table.
There were a lot of other cool things to explore in the Children's Museum, but we started to get hungry, so we headed up to the cafe where we all enjoyed lunch together.
After lunch, we headed to a special traveling exhibit of Clifford- the big red dog.
And we slid down Clifford's tail.
The whole display is setup to be like Birdwell Island, where Clifford and Emily Elizabeth (children's book characters) live. Cate found Clifford's big dog bones quite fun. Our dog is probably the size of one of Clifford's bones!
She learned about raking leaves with Daddy over by the tool shed.
And had fun crawling through a tunnel.
There was a special area for little ones with lots of stuff close to the ground for babies to play with. Cate loved playing hide and seek with Clifford (he popped in and out of his doghouse with the turn of a crank).
And she loved opening a little door to reveal a mirror too.
We read a Clifford story as Cate started to wind down.
But we made one more stop at the "Woods" section of the museum. It's a playground with all kinds of tunnels and slides and bridges and caves for kids to climb on. In a word- awesome!
Needless to say, on the way home, Cate did this...
I think the Children's Museum may be one of our new favorite places. There's plenty of space for Cate and activities and displays that will grow with her. We're looking into getting an annual pass (especially since it will be a little too cold for us to use our zoo pass this winter). We can definitely see ourselves spending lots more time here.

~Eric and Melody