Dear Aunt Caitlin

Dear Aunt Caitlin,

Thank goodness you gave me a year's membership to the Boston Children's Museum for my birthday! After a week of early wakings, picky eating, super-clingy behavior, and frigid temperatures--my mom and I needed something fun to do after school on Thursday. I immediately took off to the ball room and I had to call out to get my mom to follow me, but maybe she was just shocked that I willingly went more than 2 feet from her for the first time all week. The balls and ramps room is so fun, it took me a while to find a ball to use but I finally found a zillion of them at the tower.

I wanted to use of the really big, flat balls, but I just couldn't quite reach it.

I settled on a plain old golf ball and sent it down, can you see it going?

But then I wanted that same ball back, it was tricky to find!

Couldn't find it, but found two other pretty awesome ones that I just had to show my mom.

On my way out of the room, I noticed a set of stairs that I had never seen before and I just had to test it out.

I got to the top and there was a big, blue slide! But for some reason, my mom jumped up the stairs and caught me just as I was trying to walk down the slide. Odd. We slid down together and then I grabbed a couple balls and went back up again. This time, I threw the balls down first and then tried to walk down the slide, but again my mom caught me and made me slide down with her. I think she just wanted to have some fun, too. I heard her mumbling something about how I'm supposed to sit and slide, but that doesn't seem like it would be as much fun.

Next on our museum adventure was the second floor, which is where the little kids playspace is. I walked from the stairs down the hall, but took a detour into the water table room. I'd never really spent much time in there since I thought it was baths, but it turns out that it's just for playing! I walked around and around and even got to splash in some puddles.

Lots of kitchen toys were around so I carried around a spatula for a while until I came across something even better, a red ladle! I banged it on the edge of all the water tubs for a while until my mom suggested I put the ladle into the waterfall, I appeased her and got to get myself all wet! Yippee!

I poured the water on my shirt, my pants, my shoes, and while I was tempted, I didn't drink any of it. Some silly kids went running by wearing weird, red plastic shirts over their clothes, thank goodness my mom didn't make me wear one of those. After letting the ladle float away, I tried turning off the water, but couldn't quite do it. Maybe next time I'll be a little taller and stronger.

I finally decided to go to the kids playspace, but really only wanted to sit in the car and press the music buttons. A little girl offered to drive, so I got to ride shotgun and control the radio. Silly girl.

Her mom was taking pictures, too. After a while, she hopped out, but the plastic baby offered to keep driving. I helped her steer though since her arms were pretty short.

The playspace closes before the rest of the museum so we headed upstairs to the Construction Zone, but on the way we stopped into another exhibit that I'd never tried. I shopped at a farmer's market and then found a big set of drums to play.

In the Construction Zone, I crawled through a few tunnels but then I remembered the Bobcats and just had to get in one.

My mom agreed to put me in one, but said I had to wear a helmet.

I humored her for a few seconds, but I knew my dad wouldn't want me to wear a helmet that had a Shawmut sticker on it instead of a Turner one.

The museum was closing soon and after being Independent Finley for a couple hours, I needed some snuggling time with my mom. We sat together and watched some other kids play before going to get a special snack and heading home. The snack was my favorite: fruit! Cantaloupe, watermelon, and some greenish cantaloupe that was surprisingly good.

Delicious! My mom even let me drink the pink juice at the bottom of the fruit cup, am I lucky or what?

So, Aunt Caitlin, I wanted to say THANK YOU and tell you that your museum pass is a winter-saviour for me and my mom. We always have so much fun there and it makes us think of you. Can't wait until you can go there with us again.

I love you, Finley