Tommy Meets Elmo!

To pick up where I left off...Sunday
Sunday morning Emmett and Desmond got up early to go and run the Firefighters 10K (6.2 miles) race at Golden Gate Park. The entrance fee benefits the city fire department, so that's a good thing. It sounded like a fun event - fairly low key for a San Francisco event, but still enough that the fire department probably made some cash from it. I was really pround of Emmett - he ran it in 41 minutes!

They got back and Emmett was in a positively foul mood due to hunger. I wish he would bring snacks everywhere he goes - he is a BEAR to deal with when he doesn't eat!! So, not wanting to deal with his mood, I went to bed and took a long nap. Of course, that made him even more cranky since I left him with Tommy duty AND trying to fix French toast for he and Des. Ohhhh well. I find that it's much better to remove myself from the situation rather than let it escalate into a full blown fight when he's in that mood.

I got up in time for us to get ready and head over the Bay Area Discovery Museum (http://www.badm.org - check it out, it's so cool!). It's a museum that designed especially for kids and it was so much fun! They have been running a special exhibit called 'Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?' and this weekend only they were having "Walk around Elmo". I thought Thomas would just love this so I was totally excited to take him. We went over and the first thing we found out was that you had to have separate tickets for the Elmo and they were already all sold out. Needless to say, I was SO disappointed. The web site didn't have ANY of this information and I had been looking forward to this for WEEKS!! I had even looked all over the web site to see if I could buy the tickets in advance, and if the Elmo visit needed separate tickets, but NOTHING was mentioned on the web site. Of course, I complained, and it was obvious that the people at the ticket window had been enduring abuse about this all weekend. They called the manager and it turns out that the 'walk around Elmo' was more like 'meet and greet Elmo' - think Santa Claus at the mall - he's sitting there and one by one the children get to come up and say hi. Apparently, Sesame Street had flown a special person in to make sure the museum didn't allow too many people to converge on Elmo at the same time. The museum didn't know about all of this in advance, that's why it wasn't on the web site. Poor planning, if you ask me. But - what can you do? As a consolation, the manager said we could go in the back door with Thomas so that he could see Elmo, but he couldn't go up and greet him. It is a tribute to my inexperience with children that I thought this was a good idea. We stook in the back and Thomas was shouting "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!" and squirming like crazy trying to get out of his Dad's arm, REACHING for the Elmo, and then crying when we wouldn't let him get any closer to the Elmo. It broke my heart completely. I felt like a total failure as a Mom that I didn't get this together properly when I knew about it so far in advance and there were all those perfect, beautiful skinny Marin mothers and all their children getting to meet Elmo. Stupid, but sometimes these things just hit you the wrong way at the wrong time. So as Emmett removed our hysterical child from the room, I just totally broke down. The manager heard Tommy and then saw me crying and took pity on us and gave me a ticket. It was like someone had handed me a winning lottery ticket. I felt very embarrassed and stupid about the crying and the whole incident - but hey, if it we were going to meet Elmo, I was willing to take it. Anything to make my little boy happy (it's a good thing his Dad is there to keep me from spoiling him ROTTEN!). I ran to catch up with Emmett and Thomas and we got into the line to meet the Elmo. It was a long line and pretty difficult. Another thing that they did poorly was having Elmo in this room with the line snaking back and forth, but no screen or anything to block the Elmo - so every kid in the room could see Elmo but had to wait their turn. Have you ever tried to explain to a two year old that he has to wait for a half hour before he can see his hero??? [They could stand to take some hints from the mall Santa - they almost always make the line in such a way that children can't see the Santa until the last minute.] It was a complete mayhem of screaming children thrashing like crazy and frazzled parents trying to physically restrain their children from bum rushing Elmo. The noise level was enough to damage hearing. We waited for about a half hour total and I think both Emmett and I were exhausted from taking turns holding Tommy back and then the other one trying to distract him with songs, words, food, ANYTHING. Tommy was easier to manage than the child in front of us whom I thought was going to have an aneurysm if he had to wait 30 more seconds. When that child's parents finally let him go, he raced to Elmo so fast and was hugging him and smiling - the pictures must have been incredible. He was smiling and laughing and just so happy. We were not so fortunate. When it was Tommy's turn he ran to the Elmo and then got about 5 feet away and realized how HUGE the Elmo was - bigger even than Mommy and Daddy - and stopped dead. He started sliding sideways trying to get away from the Elmo. Elmo's assistant was trying to get Tommy to go and say hi but he was having none of it. Emmett and I took him up to sit next to Elmo and he was willing to do that, but he was definitely not sure about the whole thing. The good news was that just getting to go up and get close seemed to satisfy him. He didn't cry this time when we went to leave. We also got some *okay* pictures of the whole event [http://www.thomasnolan.com/photos/081504].

After the Elmo visit, we went around to some of the other exhibits. The Sesame Street exhibit was pretty cool, lots of cool facts and display items from the early years of Sesame Street (which is now 35 years old, can you believe it?). They had a cool camera exhibit where you could sit in a chair and the camera would show you on TV with one of the characters (you could choose from 3 or 4 of them). It was cool and I took some pictures of Emmett and Tommy that looked like they were on TV with Elmo. They also had Big Bird's nest - or at least a replica where the children could sit inside and play. There were two computer games set up so kids could play this Sesame Street video game. And then in the very back there was a projection screen that was playing excerpts from Sesame Street episodes of days past. Overall, the exhibit was a little bit old for Tommy. The main thing that he liked was the projection screen and he watched that for quite a while. When they had on various celebrities singing with the characters he got down from his chair and was dancing around. So cute.

We went from there to the toddler area. They have a special area just for kids under 42 inches. The idea is that they won't get pushed around by older kids. They had all kinds of stuff outdoors, a teepee looking thing, and a bunch of other small play structure things made of natural materials. Then there was this stream thing with all these rubber fish in it for the kids to play with and splash in. It was about 2 feet off the ground, perfect height for a toddler to play in without being able to actually crawl into and get completely soaked. They even had these little aprons so that the kids wouldn't get their clothes too wet. Thomas REALLY enjoyed this. He grabbed the rubber fish and splashed as much as he could in the water. Then we went to the indoor stuff. The toddler area had two indoor rooms. The first had a water theme. There were three circular waterbed type things in the corners - they were decorated ponds with lily pads on the top. The 'matresses' were super thick (presumably puncture proof). Thomas hated this - too scary and unstable for him. Neither Emmett or I could convince him to play on the waterbed. There was an exhibit in the middle of the floor that had this long cylinders at the bottom of which were rubber frogs. When you pushed a button on the floor the frogs would let a bubble escape from their mouths. Tommy LOVED that! He kept stepping on the button and yelling "Bubbles! Bubbles!" He was so excited to be able to make the bubbles. He also liked these big buttons they had on the wall with a picture of a pond animal on them and when you pressed the button it made noises like the pictured animal. He kept pressing over and over again. The thing I liked the most was this tunnel that was made out of clear plastic. Water was POURING down on either side and on top of the tunnel. It was like being under a HUGE waterfall in a plastic barrel. You could see and hear the water rushing everywhere but, of course, you weren't getting wet. Thomas was a little afraid of this at first, but once he warmed up to it you couldn't get him out of there! The only downside was that he actually bullied this other child. I was pretty surprised because he's usually pretty reasonable with other kids, having been in daycare and all that. But he grabbed this other child by the front of his shirt and was pushing him up against the wall. This really scared the other child and, although Emmett got them separated pretty quickly, the other kid was crying for a while and I felt really bad. Strange. We spent a little bit of time in the other room. It wasn't as cool, but also not nearly as many people, so almost like having the place to ourselves. There were these pads in the floor that you could step on with different textures - one simulated grass, the other was little rubbery spikes, and the third was gel-like substance very squishy and fun (can you tell which was my favorite? haha). There was also a climbing structure that looked pretty cool and all kinds of dress up costumes of different animals and a bunch of stuffed animals. Tommy got especially enamored of this stuffed fox, but that was pretty much the only thing he really liked at that exhibit.

By the time we did all that it was 5pm, time for the museum to close and us to go home, which was good because we were all STARVING. I made spaghetti with smoked chicken sausage and broccoli for dinner and we all ate like we hadn't had a meal in a week. Afterwards it was time for Tommy's bath and bed. Emmett and I rounded out the evening by watching more Olympics coverage. He likes the swimming, I like the gymnastics, so it works out pretty well.

Another weekend ends and another week begins....:-)

Love,
Melissa