The Splendid Trip Home

Ian and I drove home from Washington on Thursday. We said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa around 9:30 (kudos to them for a job well done taking care of an active little boy under difficult conditions (i.e. in a hotel room)!). By 9:31 Ian was asleep. He slept until 11:30, at which point we were approaching Richmond. I learned on my last trip with Ian that it's best to plan to stop for a while at an interesting place to tire him out before loading him in the car again. The GPS told us that the Richmond Children's Museum was nearby, so we stopped for a couple of hours to play.

Ian was happy to see that they have drums, just like our museum at home. He also enjoyed the hopping-on chimes on the ground that you see in the background:

Ian desperately wanted to climb this steep ladder to go down the dinosaur slide, although he was clearly too little for it. We watched the bigger kids go down for a while, and he had never seen anything more hilarious. After caring mostly for swings, Ian seems to have developed a sudden intense interest in slides:

Here is Ian at the top of a large climbing structure in the museum, bouncing with excitement:

Ian has recently developed quite an interest in climbing. He was proud of himself for climbing into this boat without assistance:

And, after spending some time sorting fruits and vegetable into baskets, Ian climbed out of this area:

Here Ian is contemplating digging for dinosaur bones, but it didn't hold his interest for long:

After two hours running around the museum, Ian was ready to get back into the car. Five minutes later, he was asleep. He slept until we were about 20 minutes north of home. I couldn't have asked for a smoother trip!

Since we've arrived home, Ian has continued to visit a different museum each day -- our neighborhood Life and Science museum on Friday and the Marbles children's museum in Raleigh on Saturday. Doug and I continue to stick to our simple living plan, which includes making use of public space rather than accumulating stuff for ourselves at home. This applies to Ian, too -- he has a nice set of interesting toys here, but rather than buying more, we make use of the local museums and parks. Since we've become members of our museum, we've visited every weekend. We anticipate lots more museum trips in the future!