Last week Ryan’s class went to the Children’s Museum. It made me realize how very little I’ve done with him. I used to take Natalie to museums and mommy and me classes all the time. Poor boy.
Sitting with his classmates waiting for the tour to start.
The first room we went to had this long, steep rope ladder. He ignored every other thing in the room.
I worried he wouldn’t be able to make it to the top. It required a lot of upper body strength and stamina. The first time he went up it the kids behind him caught up and started crawling over him. He didn’t like it and neither did I. There was a lot going through my mind: can he make it to the top? look how fast those other kids are… are they going to crush him?
Honestly, it broke my heart to watch him stall in the middle. I asked him if he wanted to come back down to the bottom. He did.
Once he slid his way back down, I asked if he wanted to try something else. He looked at me as if I were crazy. “Rope ladder again,” he said. I didn’t want to discourage him, and since the kids had cleared out I agreed to let him try.
Although it took him a little while to get up (and me scaling it behind him just in case he lost his footing – which he didn’t), he made it all the way to the top.
We slid together down a huge, loopy slide. Once at the bottom he ran to the rope ladder again and started back up. I followed him up one more time, but encouraged him to go down the slide himself.
He scaled the rope ladder at least 3 or 4 more times on his own (my nerves relaxing a little more each time) and slid down the slide.
At the last minute (like literally the last 60 seconds) before his class switched to the next room, he jumped in the mini car….
Then on to the rainbow bounce- walk. He was nervous at first, but as soon as he figured out it was a bouncy walkway, he loved it and did it over and over. I had to beg him to leave.
Next up was the art room where he painted a picture.
And helped his BFF, Zoe, paint her picture.
and pretended to be a weather man…
The art room didn’t hold his attention like rope ladder so we took a private tour of the gift shop.
Guess what we found?
A penny press. We pressed a penny for his penny passport. Yay!
Ryan loved the museum. There was lots of climbing…
exploring…
and sliding!
After almost 3 hours it was time to go. I had a meeting to get to. Ryan cried and asked for “10 more minutes.” He’s asked about the museum several time since. Looks like we’ll be headed back sometime soon.
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss