Art Musuem

Fancy buildings.

What were we up to?

Oh, yeah. The art museum!

A place full of fragile, high-value objects is normally not high on my bucket list.

Especially when the walls are sparsely populated and there's nothing to read. I could have walked the entire museum and left content in five minutes by myself.

However, there was a free children's program. It recommended kids aged 5 to 7 show up in the 1-3 time slot.

I didn't think an art museum would be super high-interest for Shane, but you never know until you try.

It wasn't. We spent 20 minutes in one small square room. Shane started on his feet trying to answer every question and found himself on the stairs not long after.

Sometimes hanging.

Never the same stair twice.

Or at least not the same side of it.

We looked at the next picture for 10 minutes. It started like this...

and then progressed...

...to this.

It was about that time I realized very few of the children were actually between 5 and 7. The sign-up sheet was accidentally left out and confirmed my suspicions. Nine was closer to the average age and there were a couple twelve year olds hanging out with their younger sibs.

It was a decent program, but not really Shane or I's thing. The lady in charge had to play to the crowd's level, too. She dropped/defined words like "non representational" and "abstract." Educational, but a bit much for Shane's age level.

The craft made up for it.

The exhibit we looked as was "Fish and Fowl." The task was to create a collage in any way we could to tell a story. The kids were encouraged to pick a fish or a bird depending on what they felt they related best to. Bonus points awarded for symbols.

Shane and I had a minor disagreement about which scissors he needed (He would have been content with a pair of broad swords hinged together), but went right to work. Two-sided tape blew his mind.

At first, Shane wanted to work alone and purely from his imagination. Later, I showed him I could sketch an outline and cut out shapes from pictures.

I was hired. It wasn't easy tracing his outlines, either (see the "hurricane" below).

Shane was proud. He couldn't wait to run around and show everyone.

He made up a story for it as he went.

Then he made up a story for mine.

He dived in front of the photographer a couple of times, too. I could have some good pics when they're posted half a month from now!

Finally, we came to the moment Shane had waited for. The moment when his hope and dream for the afternoon would be fulfilled.

He rolled down the hill we walked up.

He rolled some more when it was flat (I'm not sure that will be an effective pick-up line when he's older, but who knows?).

Shane's full of Mike. He can only sit still for so long. We ran up and down the parking garage stairs, too.

Shane insisted we ride the elevator all the way down and all the way up.

I'm not sure if we'll go to an art museum any time soon, but it worked out well this time. I know I learned not to show up 15 minutes early if we do!