First up, the museum's living butterfly exhibition, where you enter an 80F quonset hut filled with flowers and flitting butterflies. Brilliant Monarchs, spotted Owls, and, Sis's favorite, the shimmering Blue Morpho (a la Diego fame). "They're beautiful," crooned Bud. None of them actually landed on us, but we did see an educator feed an Owl butterfly some orange slices, its giant proboscis sucking the nectar. I liked how the room danced with colors. It was a great start to our visit.
Bud and I then headed to the main lobby to see the dinosaurs while Mama and Sis held back (I'm guessing she won't like Jurassic Park). Bud started chattering the minute he spotted them--look at how big, there's a baby, there are three, hey one is little-head-long-tail (our nickname for one of the dinosaurs in the Caillou game). On and on and on, to the particular amusement of the young couple next to us, who soon engaged Bud in a lively conversation about his favorite dinosaurs, his visit to the museum thus far, and the penguin he was holding up to see the dinosaurs (yes, Pengy and Amy the Bunny have now been to AMNH). He was very excited.
And became more so when we started touring the various dioramas, complete with animals from Africa, North America, and Asia. There were elephants, tigers, bears of all sorts, and so many things we couldn't identify. I think the North American hall was their favorite--Bud especially became excited upon spotting a white bunny in a diorama and raced off to find Sis, who was admiring a cottontail bunny in another section of the hall. Together they ran hand in hand to see the "xiao bai tu" (little white bunny). There were a few dioramas that gave us all pause, "Mommy, why is that zebra lying down with all those birds?" How do you explain carrion to a 3 1/2 year old on a happy family outing? Next gallery, please.
"Mama, that whale is as big as a . . . panda bear!!" Sis exclaimed upon seeing the Blue Whale in the Hall of Ocean Life. Neither one of us actually understood her comparison, in that pandas just aren't that big, but it worked for her and she proceeded to wander the large hall admiring turtles, dolphin, manatees, walruses (walri??), sea lions, and the like. Bud, on the other hand, didn't like that hanging whale at all, nor the whale sounds emmanating from the ceiling. It took all our coaxing to get him in the room and he quite decidedly announced when we had finished our single circuit around the room that we'd done what we had set out to do.
Lunchtime. Always their favorite part. This time with "dino-nuggets." And lots of fruit.
Just to do their two favorite things together, we hit the gift shop next. We have a rule of thumb about gift shops--the kids can choose something that is approximately the cost of admission and approved by us. Bud picked up a giant stuffed snake but decided on a pop-up book on dinosaurs. Sis wanted the 50-piece safari playset but got a much smaller one with different animals. I chose a book, How to Visit the Science Museum with Your Grandmother, and Mama got her requisite patch and pin.
There was a special fair at AMNH on Saturday, "Polar Weekend," featuring booths about various polar explorations, polar gear, polar environmental issues, and native cultures of the polar regions such as the Sami of northern Scandinavia and the Inuit. We looked through microscopes, made penquin popsicle stick puppets, pretended to build a penguin nest with tongs and rocks, made UV bead bracelets, watched a video of a walrus eating, drilled a block of ice with a giant screw-thingy, crawled inside traditional Sami tents and high-tech expeditionary tents, and finally went to hear a concert on traditional Inuit throat singing by the sister act Nukariik. The kiddos sat mesmerized for almost the whole performance, evening singing along to the audience participation part. I think they liked the way the songs mimicked nature, like seagulls, the river, and the mosquito. Mama and I were amazed (and reminded of Tuvan throat singing from that movie, Genghis Blues).
As we were leaving, I remembered how Sis and Bud have repeatedly asked me to see their bones. They are very interested in their bones, being able to feel but not see them. And there was a life-size human skeleton, missing all the "squishy bits," so we talked about bones, tapping our teeth to get a sense of the texture, counting ribs for kicks, and in general giggling about human bodies. Next to the human skeleton was that of a chimpanzee. I had already mentioned earlier this week that humans were "related" to apes and so I pointed out the comparison and reminded them that humans had evolved from apes. This of course was confusing and led to the best question of the day--you guessed it, the title of this post: "Was Gommie a chimpanzee?" I think it's going to take a few more visits to get that straightened out.
But on the way out the door, we asked the kids, now veteran NYC museum-goers, if they'd rather take Gommie to the science museum or the art museum. Gommie, looks like you better bone up on your biology, we're going back to AMNH!
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