Code Adam

I forgot that today was Veteran's Day and so I hadn't planned any activities to keep my kiddo's entertained. However, I did luck out that my mom decided to pay us a visit and showed up on Monday and left this morning. Of course the kid's were excited to see Grandma but even more excited to have her dog, Paddy, come along too. Poor Paddy (a teacup poodle) was chased, grabbed and held so much he was completely exhausted by the time the kid's went to bed.

The excitement of having the "dog" visit carried over to this morning and so my mom and her pup were out the door early on to visit their next friend. This left me the rest of the day to keep these two very excited children busy. What to do? Head off to the Seattle Children's Museum!

This was a great plan. I even timed it so that we got there at lunch hour hoping the masses would be out eating followed up by napping. This left only a few hundred kids to wade through to have our turn at the Mr. Potato Head exhibit.

Mr. B spent all of one minute trying out the MPH exhibit before passing it over in lieu of the fire truck and gear. He planted himself there for most of our three hour visit.

Now anytime you go to a place this size with children who are younger but not young enough to want to hang with you it is very hard to keep track of them both. I definitely make it a priority to keep a close eye on Mr. B but it was Beeb who I lost . . . first. It took me about 5-7 minutes of walking around before I spotted her. The first couple of minutes I wasn't too worried but after I checked every place and didn't see her I felt that little bit of panic induced adrenaline hitting my system. I was greatly relieved to spot her and have no idea how I overlooked her the first time.

At this point I decided the kiddo's would both have to stay near me despite their independent nature. Quickly Beeb was bored and so I thought a change of scenery necessary. I gave Mr. B his two minute warning that he would have to leave the fire truck (much to his resistance) and we moved over to the Cogs and art area.

These areas seemed perfect; smaller rooms and only one exit. Mr. B immediately got past his whining when he saw the cogs and headed in to take it over (literally, the poor kids inside didn't stand a chance to have a turn). Beeb explored it for a while and then fluttered around me before I directed her to the art studio to paint. This gave me my first opportunity to sit down on the bench directly in front of the cog area and work on making a hat (with the circular loom - so easy!). Beeb soon called for my assistance and I was gone for about 90 seconds helping her get paper on her board so she could paint. When I got back to my post Mr. B was gone. I didn't panic at all because this is Mr. B and whereas I panic over Beeb, who doesn't find trouble on an hourly basis, Mr. B does and so my response rate is much slower (hoping someone else will find the mess first and clean it up before I get there).

I figured he either went back to the firetruck or would come running by momentarily. After a few minutes Beeb finished her art and we went in search of her brother. After going through the entire museum I started to get a little worried so I enlisted the aid of the staff. I really like their system. You tell them you need help finding your child, they take the child's description and radio it out to the other staff and then you get to sit on a bench lounging while you watch all these adults with hand radio sets run around for you.

Of course during all this you want to appear to be the worried parent so I decided it would be a dead give away if I continued to work on my hat. Every few minutes someone would come by and assure me that they would find Mr. B to which I would reply, "You might want to check any area that is off limits." only to be assured that everything was locked up or had an alarm. Yeah right.

It took about 20 minutes and six adults but he was finally located in a restricted area that was pitch black dressed as a fire fighter. Ah yes, who knows best? That would be "MOM". You could see the relief on all the employees faces. They actually thought they might have "lost" one, which made me giggle. Mr. B wasn't going anywhere and there would have been one heck of a fight if anyone tried to removed him from his precious fire truck before he was ready. As he told me repeatedly, it was his "job" to keep the girls away from the firetruck.