Friday, February 10, 2006

Brian Work Gooder (Some)

Okay, it violates my New Year's resolution about not post-dating blog entries, but I started this on Friday and didn't get to post it until Sunday night ...

This morning started off pretty rough. Celeste woke up earlier than she really wanted to (she blamed it on Evelin flushing the toilet), and couldn't get back to sleep. This did mean Evelin got to see her before heading back to Annapolis for the second day of her conference, but it meant the rest of the morning she was grumpy and a bit off.

Considering how the previous two days had gone, I figured Celeste wasn't going to nap until late, so I figured we'd be good to go if we went down to The Mall in the morning. I asked Celeste if she wanted to head to the park or to see airplanes and she signed AIRPLANE, so off we went.

We found a pretty good parking place along The Mall and walked over to Air and Space and joined the security queue. Once we were inside, Celeste got out of her stroller and just started looking around and around, pointing at different things. We walked down toward the Air Transportation gallery (currently closed due to work on the ceiling), and then Celeste climbed up a flight of stairs headed toward the second floor. We ended up in the Sea-Air Operations gallery; Celeste really liked walking around the ship's deck and seeing the helicopter rescue on a big vid screen, but what caught her attention most was the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk ... or at least the torpedo fixed below its wing. She signed AIRPLANE and then pointed at the torpedo and signed BABY; I asked her if it was a baby airplane, and she said "yuh-huh."

Since she's really into the moon these days, I made sure we visited the Apollo to the Moon gallery and showed her the samples of moon rocks and dust, as well as the Apollo 17 lunar roving vehicle. I told Celeste that the LRV was the sort of car they drove on the moon, and then asked her if she'd known there were cars on the moon. She nodded and said "yuh-huh," like I was some sort of idiot for even asking ...

After a trip to the museum bookstore — Baby Galileo Sees the Stars, because it was the best moon-related kids' book we saw, and Amelia's Fantastic Flight, because I thought it looked cute — we headed out. At first, I thought we'd wheel through the National Museum of the American Indian, but I glanced down at Celeste and as soon as we were away from the planes and books, her eyes were starting to close. I turned around and headed back to the T.R.U.C.K. and, mostly by feeding her snacks on the ride home, kept her awake until she was safe in her crib a little before noon.

This was great: It turned out to be her normal nap time ... but a longer-than-normal nap, nearly three hours. By the time she awoke, Evelin was home and they were able to run out to the park to meet G--- and K---, while I ran to the grocery store to pick up some things before this weekend's snow storm hit ...

The rest of the evening went pretty smoothly, although, for some reason, Celeste did not want a bath: She spent all of about five seconds in it before standing up and begging to be taken out.

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