Master Manipulator

Sometimes, I'm that mom. You know, the one who lets her kids do things that seem all harmless fun for me but that other parents cringe at, hoping against hope that their kids don't notice what mine are doing.

Let me give you an example.

Today, the wee ones had no school (again), so we spent our morning at the Kohl's Children's Museum again. We always have a great time, and the membership makes the price right!

One of the Little Miss's favorite things to do is get her face painted. She likes for me to paint it for her, poor dear. My artistic skills leave a bit to be desired. Fortunately, she's happy with the butterfly that I painted. It's really that or a happy face.

The problem came in when she noticed what Mister Man was doing. For the first time ever (and this leads me to think that possibly everything we've been doing for the past four years is really having an impact on his development and sensory issues, yay!), he wanted his face painted, and he did it all himself while I was helping Little Miss.



He calls that masterpiece "Two Face" after the villain. We're way into superheroes right now. You'll notice that one half of his face is all scary and painted up and the other is totally normal. You'll also notice that he chose - of his own volition with no prompting from me - a gorgeous Vikings sweatsuit to wear today.

And in our family, of course.... Monkey See, Monkey Do.



The problem came in when Little Miss decided it would be fun to paint my face, too. Since I have nowhere I need to be for the rest of the day and it is water soluble crayon (read: very easily removable), what's the harm?

I'll admit that I did have a moment of paranoia that with my face painted this way I'd get pulled over on the way home and have to explain my face to a police officer, but I didn't let that deter me. She spent a good ten or so minutes fixing my face up right. See?



As we were leaving, Little Miss decided she had to go potty (yay, good girl!). As we were washing our hands, a girl around five or so said to her mom:

Wow, so mommies can get their faces painted, too?
Her Mom: Well, I guess so.
Little Girl: Can I paint your face, Mommy?
Her Mom: Not today, but maybe next time.
Little Girl: Why not?
Her Mom: We're in the process of leaving right now, so we don't have time to do it today.
Little Girl: Please?
Her Mom: Not today. We've had such a good day playing in the museum and having so much fun.
Little Girl: But my day would be so much better if I could just paint your face!
Her Mom: Nice try. The answer's still no.

And that whole time? I'm the one cringing hoping that Little Miss isn't picking up the techniques to try to manipulate people. I'm not so concerned about her manipulating me, but ... let's just say that her grandparents are a bit more susceptible.

Forget The Art, I'm All About The Kids!

I love museums. I love science museums and kid museums anyway. You know, the ones where you get to play. I know this makes me a bad an uncultured person, but for me art should be something you love that's on your walls. I just have no interest in looking at weird (or beautiful) thing after weird thing in hall after hall.

Before kids, science museums were my savior. They were so much fun to play in. And don't ask me about the toy and ummm stuffed animal (like taxidermy) museums I went to in Munich. I still enjoy them today, but luckily I now have children's museums that I can justify going to.

The Kohl's Children's Museum is one of our favorites. They have a ton of stuff to do and play with, and they change up some areas. We go every chance we get when we have a day off school. Like today.

And mmmm the pretzel cafe. I was so proud of myself for walking out of there having only a veggie sandwich pretzel and not getting one of their specialty stuffed pretzels or their chocolate chip cookies with pretzels on top. Ok ok ok. That's only because I'm headed out NOW for my quarterly girls' night out in the city where we're going to a fantabulous restauarant. And eating and drinking. A lot. I love Metra!

But without further ado -- my cute wee ones enjoy the museum! And remind me to renew when we go back in two weeks. Our membership expires March 1!

Little Miss loves to decorate the house they have there. The magnetic wallpaper may be tacky, but she's learning her home improvement skills early! Then again, I wouldn't wish the skill of wall papering on anyone. That stuff is such a pain!



Mister Man absolutely loved being a vet. He put that little lab coat on the second he walked into the vet area and never took it off -- including when we left. Oops. He was fascinated by the microscope that blew up images of everything from a tapeworm to a flea to a human hair. Watching him examine all those was... well, adorable.



As the vet, he got really into it. Not only was he taking care of the animals there, but he was getting into their kennels to help them out so they would feel more comfortable there. And it's possible that Little Miss closed the door on him and tried to lock him in. Possible....



Little Miss wasn't going to be left out of the action. She wouldn't wear the lab coat, but she walked around with the giant shot needle for a long time. Look at the expression on this poor girl's face as Little Miss gave her kitty a big shot!



This museum also has face painting available as an option. Generally, Little Miss prefers to do her own face painting. That means she dips the crayon thing into the sponge to get it wet and then draws all over her face and clothes. I have a picture of her on our calendar for this year where she's almost all magenta. Apparently she's maturing in that she wanted me to draw a butterfly. I have no artistic skills. Do the polka dots hide some of the bad job I did? That was the goal.



And then there's the car wash. This is another perennial favorite. The wee ones run one way through the car wash. Then they run the other way. They dance in the middle. They run back and forth and back and forth. I love it. This pretty much ensures a good nap by the time we get home from the museum.



The most fascinating part of the museum for the wee ones -- and many other kids -- is the dirt pusher. Basically you have a crank that moves little containers up and around a track. When the "dirt" bundles get to the top, they slide down the roof, and there are wheelbarrows to catch the "dirt" and bring it back to the beginning. We always spend about half our time at this one station. Then again, so do most of the boys that make it that far into the museum! It is pretty entrancing to watch, to be honest.



And as a "fundraiser" they offer the twirly coin collector. You put a coin in, and it goes around and around and around. At the bottom, it tells you how much the coin is worth. Ostensibly, this is educational as well as fascinating, right? Well, let's just say that I've caught my kids begging for coins (successfully) from strangers before, but never once have they looked up to see what the value of the coin was worth. We spent a good sixteen cents here today -- not counting what my friend plugged in.



Little Miss announced that she was Captain Hook driving her pirate ship to London to catch Peter Pan. Forget the fact that this boat is supposed to be in the midwest in a traditional pond with deer and geese and dragonflies and such. She's using her imagination, and you should have seen the fierce look Captain Hook gave me after she caught me taking her picture....



And really... I ummm didn't play with any of it. I was just ummmm helping them when they got stuck. Yeah. That's the ticket. And now? It's time for me to go out and act like an adult with my girls night!

Mister Man Rocks

Really, I know this already. I sometimes forget though because we don't have a ton of one on one time. Little Miss is a me-too-firster, and that sometimes puts Mister Man at a disadvantage, since he's such an easy kid ninety-nine percent of the time.

We had a birthday party to go to in Glenview, which is about an hour from our house. It was at 2pm, and Little Miss was not invited. She naps, and wouldn't have been able to go even if she were invited to decorate a cake and a cookie at a bakery. HA! Like I would have let her make that mess anyway.

I decided to take the easy way out and go to the Kohl's Children's Museum right after church and just make it a non-issue for Little Miss that a) she wasn't going to the party and b) that she had to nap and Mister Man didn't.

We belong to the museum because it's a great place that the wee ones and I love. We don't get to go too often because it's almost an hour from our house, but we go a half dozen times or so times a year. With two wee ones, it gets hard because I'm contantly monitoring who's where and doing what and negotiating to keep someone at the current activity or with the other to move on to another exhibit. It gets a little stressful.

I've never gone with just Mister Man and I, but we had fun. In fact, he asked if we could do this with just him and me again soon. Awww. You betcha, kiddo!

In the craft room, we got to look at worms in dirt and touch them and see what they do. Then, Mister Man drew a picture of a worm. He named it Lurker Turker (or LT for short, as you can see on his page). I thought it was very creative that his worm was a rainbow of colors with purple hair and lots of legs.



As always, we loved playing with the construction set. This is the first time we've been that he really figured out how the levers work and that he can control the crane bucket to pick up the "dirt" beanbags. And yes, that's a CAT tee shirt, so he inadvertantly dressed himself properly (my only requirement for his dressing is that it be a bright color if we're going to be in a crowded place).

He did a lot of really hard work on the conveyor belt where you place the dirt onto the conveyor belt, turn the wheel (which he did cooperatively with a little friend he made -- he made a friend!) which sends the bean bags down a chute and off the roof, catch the falling beanbags in a wheelbarrow and wheel the load back to the conveyor belt. It was really neat to see him sharing the duties with several children who came and went and helped with various parts of the work. For a boy who started out with social delays, this is so cool to see!

We also went to Dominick's where Mister Man picked up a shopping list and picked up one (and only one) of each item on his list. There were plenty of other kids who swept whole shelves of items into their carts leaving nothing for the others. No comment from me on that. He was really proud of what he put in his cart, and he loved it when I helped him check out at the register and he had to "pay" me for the items.

I forget sometimes how much fun it is to spend time one on one with each of the wee ones. They really are good kids and a delight to hang out with (ok, usually). My goal is to spend at least one afternoon alone with one or the other at least once every other week. I'd like to do it more often, but with my and my husband's work schedules, that may be a bit of a stretch.

Either way, we have no school this coming Friday, so guess where we're headed!