Children's Museum of Manhattan

We joined P's buddy Malek and his mama at the Children's Museum of Manhattan on Friday. This place is Amazing. P Loves the letter eating dragon. He's focused on it the last few trips, but this time he really spread his love everywhere - for Five Hours!

It was busy, as it always is, the place is unbelievably popular (Gwen Stefani's kid was in the throng). Never a big fan of leaving my side in kid infested crowds, P attached himself to my hand for about the first 4 hours and then found his independence during the last hour. (I believe this squarely fits the "hard to transition" label for 3 year olds...)

He dressed as a fireman and drove the fire truck for ages. He played shop with some other 3 year olds. The sand table was practically a spiritual experience for him because he's missed his dirt pile so much this winter. We built foam block walls and crashed them and pushed and pulled millions of knobs and dials. He found a porcupine puppet that he fell in love with. Perched on his shoulder, he chatted with it, grabbing it for the occasional hug. At one point he looked very seriously into the porcupine's eyes and declared "I'll never forget you. I'll always remember you." The visiting Greek mythology section was a highlight for P, but he was pretty disappointed Theseus and the Minotaur weren't featured. Fortunately the climbable Trojan Horse redeemed the show and he and Malek enjoyed scaling it's insides.

We stayed in the city for dinner to meet E. Tired little P happily ordered a chocolate cheesecake brownie with coconut ice cream to start. Normally a very healthy eater, he has been on an enormous ice cream kick this week (we found some peppermint gelato without food coloring last week and it was a veritable ice cream diet for a few days there). Ah well, at least he's feeding his brain...