Right after breakfast we packed up and headed down to Santa Monica before the beach got too crowded. We got a perfect spot right by the pier, spread our beach blanket out, and the boys got busy with their sand toys. I'm pretty sure Jon and I could set them up in the sand and go out to dinner and they'd still be in the exact same spot when we returned two hours later! It was a perfect beach morning- sunny but not too hot. Two years ago the boys were absolutely positively terrified of the water and the kelp that washed up, but luckily this year they are totally fine with it... every now and then they'll run down to fill their buckets up or splash around in the water to cool off. After two hours of sun we packed up and walked to the Third Street Promenade to find some lunch. We found a Johnny's Pizza which we discovered last time we were here- it has the world's greatest white pizza with spinach and garlic so we got a few slices of that (Heaven!) and we got a steak and rice bowl from a delicious Asian place that I can't for the life of me remember the name of. They had these cute little coconut rice and mango parfaits that we got the boys for dessert- there were about four bites in each one and it was the perfect little treat :)
By the time we finished lunch it was 1:00pm so one would have thought that traffic wouldn't have been too bad, but anyone who would have thought such a thing clearly isn't from Los Angeles! (Guilty!) It took us 45 minutes to drive about 10 miles to the California Science Center but it was totally worth the time. We took the boys to see the Pompeii exhibit and oh my gosh was it incredible! The boys went through a volcano phase awhile back and it is still something that interests them quite a bit. The exhibit was mostly artifacts from Pompeii, which most four year olds (most adults even) would probably find to be mind numbingly boring- but the boys paid attention to each and every piece throughout the entire exhibit. The stuff was truly fascinating, but I was equally as fascinated with the boys' attention span and true interest in it all. After the exhibit we went to see the Forces of Nature IMAX film about volcanoes, earthquakes and tornadoes. It was the second movie the boys had ever seen (the first was an IMAX back at home about steam engines in the Canadian Rockies) and it struck me as rather odd that they can handle the reality of natural disasters in a way that they can't handle the average children's cartoon. Sometimes raising the boys can be really, really challenging. And sometimes it is really challenging for the most ridiculous reasons- like the day Frozen came out on DVD and I actually sat at my computer and cried because every single friend I have ran out to buy a copy for their kids and I knew that there was simply no way the boys could ever handle seeing it. Or when the boys started pretending that they had seen the Lego Movie because all of the kids at the park were talking about it and Caleb actually told me "We know its inappropriate for us mama but we just pretended we saw it so we could play too." Sometimes I secretly wish we could do some of those normal kid things. But then there are times, like today, that I know the very reason we can't do some of those normal kid things is the exact same reason we can do some of the incredible things we do- like spend an hour discovering the ruins of Pompeii with our four year olds who soaked in every bit of information their little brains could absorb. And times like these help me remember that the boys may be a bit different sometimes- but they are pretty gosh darn awesome kids. After the movie, we had a few minutes to take Daddy to see the Endeavor. The boys and I had seen it last time we were here with Grandma, but they wanted to show Daddy this time. It's no less amazing the second time you see it!!! By the time we finished it was nearly closing time- which unfortunately meant that we were trapped in downtown Los Angeles smack dab in the middle of rush hour... Oy vei!
We made it home in about an hour and got dinner on the table before the boys settled in to do what they do best. They got out their Legos and reenacted everything they learned at the Science Center- working over all of the information they had taken in, processing it in their own way, and solidifying it in their minds for what is likely to be eternity. They built Mt. Vesuvius complete with a magma chamber reaching into the outer core of the Earth and collected minifigs to be preserved in the ash. They built the plates in the Earth's crust and shifted them, resulting in a catastrophic earthquake. Then Matthew scooped everything up in his arms and spun wildly around the living room while explaining that the hot air was rising up past the cold air and both were blowing at different speeds and the hot air got caught in an updraft that formed into a funnel cloud. Once again, I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. I just love times like these when the boys take newfound knowledge and make it their own through creative play. It's how they learn- through play. But it is also tough to know that if we end up sending them to school in the fall- or ever- they won't be allowed to learn like that because there is no room for play in learning, even when play is learning. It makes me sad to think that school isn't likely to be a place the boys can learn freely. But we're here for the summer in large part so that we can let the boys learn and play and play and learn- so I tried to just enjoy the hour long recap of their museum visit because it really was an incredible day :)
Brothers and best friends...
Run!!!
Under the pier
Silly Matt
Caleb
Beach bum
Happy boys
Dug a giant hole :)
Third Street Promenade
Movie time!!
No comments:
Post a Comment