Public Places
During our trip to Seattle we hit several public places with the kids. These included The Science Fiction Museum, Seattle Center Children’s Museum, Emerald City Comic Con, and the Seattle Aquarium. Each of these places was a fascinating destination and I could have spent hours just wandering and reflecting. Instead I pelted helter-skelter through each one trying to keep track of four kids. The kids are usually very good about staying together, but in a place such as the museum, there are so many new things to see that they forget to stay together. For the Sci Fi Museum, and the Children’s Museum I had additional adults to help me keep track of the kids. For the comic con and the aquarium I was on my own.
I think the biggest challenge was the very different attention spans of my four kids. Kiki would have liked to meander slowly reading signs and looking closely. Link was frankly frightened by the Sci Fi Museum and just wanted to leave. Gleek spent as much time swinging on railings as she did looking at exhibits. Patches merely demanded to be carried everywhere. But despite the chaos we all got through and had fun.
I think the highlight of the Sci Fi Museum was the SETI display. They had a rotating cylinder which contained one million tiny yellow beads and one black bead. The point was to show how difficult the search for extra-terrestrial life is with the sky full of stars. Kiki was very impressed with the concept and began spinning the tube to look for the black bead. I took two steps farther on to let Patches examine some buttons when Kiki announced “I found it!” Disbelieving, I stepped back to look. There it was, a black bead among the yellow. Kiki then spun the cylinder to lose the bead and she found it again within three minutes. Then Gleek took a turn and she found the bead as well. We walked away completely unconvinced of the difficulty of finding aliens. Obviously SETI should hire my daughters.
The highlight of the Children’s Museum was the gearworks room. Gleek, Patches, and Link all spent nearly an hour there playing games and making things go. Kiki preferred the Bob the Builder room because it had a “water” pump which actually pumped blue plastic balls. She created a whole game which involved the balls, the pump, and the buckets. Unfortunately we left the Children’s Museum about 10 minutes too late to avoid a scene at the food court. The kids were all over-tired, over-excited, and over-hungry.
We only made a very quick pass through Emerald City Comic Con. I could tell very quickly that it was a place for fans and collectors, not really for young kids. I had to make sure the kids got a chance to see daddy working at a convention, but then we quickly decamped to go to the Aquarium.
For whatever reason, my kids love Aquariums. They love seeing all the strange and varied forms of sea life available. This trip they loved the underwater dome where they got to be underneath the fish. We even got to see a diver feed the fish while we sat inside the dome and watched. Gleek had her dreams come true when she got to touch a sea urchin and feel its spines “hug” her finger. Kiki got to do this years ago and told Gleek about it. Gleek finally got to do it for herself. By far the funniest thing in the aquarium was watching a puffin give itself a bath. At least I think that is what the bird was doing. All I know is that it would flop its wings around and then dive under the water. It did this over and over while my kid’s giggled and giggled. It was really funny to watch. For me the coolest thing was the big red octopus. I took some pictures of that.
They were all good places to go and the right choices for my kids. Hopefully they’ve created happy memories that they can draw upon at a later date.