A busy week in Salem

This weekend was Kids' Day on the Common, and we took Avonlea Jane to enjoy the hay bale maze. She got a kick out of doing it herself and did over and over and over again.




Avonlea Jane has been getting more excited about Baby Brother as Mommy's belly gets bigger (and as she reads more books about new babies and becoming a big sister). She's always eager to tell people Mommy has a baby in her belly, and I quite often have to keep her from lifting up my shirt in public to show people the belly. Several times throughout the day she'll ask to touch or listen to the baby.



Avonlea Jane loves the book The Monster at the End of This Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin, which she calls "Monster Book." Here she is reading it to herself before asking Daddy to finish it.

Every week, the Peabody-Essex Museum has a story time that generally focuses on one of the exhibits. There is an activity, a story, and then a craft for the kids. (Ex: One week the museum put out some new Korean fans in their Korean gallery, and that week the kids learned a traditional Korean dance, heard a story about Korean cooking, and then made their own fans.) This last week wasn't focused on an exhibit; it was about pumpkins for Halloween. Following story time, though, we went to a new contemporary art exhibit in the museum that Avonlea Jane enjoyed more than any other exhibit she's visited.

The East India Marine Hall was transformed by the Freeport [No.001]: Charles Sandison exhibit, where digital projections of the words of 18th-century ship captains' logs are animated in the patterns of trade routes. The paths of the words are also dictated by real-time weather conditions in Salem, so occasionally you'll see a cloud go over the words. Avonlea Jane was simply mesmerized by the exhibit, and in the video of it, you can hear her squawking in the background.

How the East India Marine Hall normally looks:

During the exhibit:

This week, instead of having story time, the PEM had an animal trainer come in with an assortment of animals for the kids to see. Avonlea Jane was so excited about it and talked about all night the night before. The trainer brought in a rabbit, tortoise, chinchilla, tarantula, milk snake, hedgehog, boa constrictor, bearded dragon, alligator, and flying squirrel. With the exception of the tarantula, every child got the chance to pet each animal. Avonlea Jane was most delighted by getting to pet the alligator and watching the bearded dragon chase and eat bugs.

Below: Avonlea Jane playing in the nature/discovery center after the animal show.

After the museum, we went to Crunchy Granola Baby to look at newborn cloth diapers, and Avonlea Jane found a newborn-sized doll. We've been talking a lot about how things will be with the new baby (baby brother won't be able to play with you; you'll have to be very gentle with the baby; he'll spend a lot of the day having mummies) and trying to expose her to as many infants as possible. When Avonlea Jane found the doll, she took "baby brother" to the couch, climbed up, and gave him mummies for a few minutes.

She then declared, "Mummies all done. Diaper change time." She put the doll down and found a bin of cloth diapers, covers, and wipes. She gathered her supplies and set to changing the baby.

Guess who's looking forward to being Mommy's helper.