A Little Time at Betty Brinn's

A couple weekends ago, Smithsonian Magazine held Museum Day - free admittance for two to your choice of various museums around the country. Because we had yet to try out the Betty Brinn's Children's Museum in Milwaukee, we thought we would give it a shot.

Now, before I go into detail on our visit, I want to start by saying the bar was set fairly high from my own experiences growing up with the Boston Children's Museum and our visits to other children's museums this summer in Madison and Houston (see our blog posts about the others: Madison - Houston). Of these, we were particularly impressed with the Children's Museum of Houston.

Something else we need to keep in mind is that the small children's room (for ages three and under) at Betty Brinn's is currently closed for renovation, so we had to make do in the rest of the museum with the bigger kids. For the most part, Jonah did enjoy himself, but there were less age appropriate toys for him, and what was there were kind of haphazardly placed about and in poor working condition (i.e. a toy lawnmower similar to one we have at home with the wheels falling off).

In the first area, there were some BRIO train sets that kids can put the tracks together and play with the trains on them. A big BRIO train sits in the area, too, with nobs, buttons, and a broken train whistle in the engine, and different things to see on the wheels that kids can turn.

Jonah has taken to sitting on our laps to play with toys or for us to read to him. It is really quite cute. It shouldn't have been too much of a surprise to us when a teenage girl sitting by the toy trains with her family handed him a toy train, and he promptly turned around and sat in her lap to play with it. She was certainly surprised!

After some time playing with the trains, we moved on to some other areas. Jonah tried (not necessarily this order) some of the golf ball ramps,...

...the plexiglass lookout on some stairs,...

"Jonah! Get your mouth off that!"

 ...the rocking boat,...

...the tunnel,...

...the heaters,...

...and of course, the lawnmower, which he pushed all around various areas of the museum despite the broken wheels. Also notice the golf ball carefully placed on top.

Jonah likes to go places where he really probably shouldn't. For example, one exhibit was pulled just barely far enough from the wall for him to be able to squeeze through it.

He also really enjoyed sitting in a little area designed to collect golf balls after they are dropped down through an area where the hit a bunch of different percussive instruments.

So while we had a nice time, Betty Brinn's wouldn't be our top choice in children's museums. We will have to go back and check it out when the new three and under room opens. In the meantime, you can enjoy more pictures from this visit in our web album.

Trip to Madison

On Father's Day weekend, we took the opportunity to go to Madison with Kristin and Ryan Nord.  We'd talked for some time about heading over there for the Farmer's Market and I'd also wanted to visit the retail store for Title Nine (I randomly received their catalog at some point over the winter and loved a lot of the things I saw). We decided to make a day of it, hitting the market in the morning (snagging some asparagus, sugar snap peas, strawberries, baked goods, and a Siberian iris), enjoying ourselves at the Madison Children's Museum in the afternoon, and hitting Title Nine and a few of the children's outlets in Johnson Creek on the way home (scored some great deals at the Gymboree outlet!).

It was beautiful weather and the first time that either of us had actually taken a moment to walk inside the Capitol.  When Jonah is bigger, we'll go back to take a real tour of the impressive building. 

Just three feet shorter than the U.S. Capitol, the Wisconsin capitol building is quite impressive as well.

Mural inside the capitol

We've never been to the Children's Museum here in Milwaukee, but we enjoyed the one in Madison.  We weren't sure how much would be appropriate for Jonah, but it turned out that he found plenty to enjoy (and we adults did too).  My personal favorite was the Rube Goldberg-style fountain with water and balls; Jonah enjoyed pretty much everything he tried (though he certainly will grow into much of it). Kudos to the museum for the great set-up for nursing mothers, with a beautiful and comfortable room specifically designated for it.  The only negative experience was an overzealous girl of about 8 years of age who really wanted to hold and care for Jonah and kept bothering us (no accompanying adults were ever seen).

Ryan entertains Jonah with a stuffed frog.

Living on the edge as he leans over the edge of this pod-shaped chair.

Jonah plays with the cars, roads, and other objects.

I enjoyed building with the blocks.

Kristin takes Jonah down the slide.

All in all, it was an excellent day.  We'll have to plan another trip in the not-too-distant future.  Other pictures from the trip are available on our photo site.