Who Knew Science Was So Fun?

As promised, I'm posting today about our trip to the Natural Science Museum yesterday. We had so much fun! The museum is 4 stories of awesomeness, full of dinosaur skeletons, swimming fish, and real live cockroaches. But more on that in a minute.

Our mistake when we arrived was going straight into the room with whale skeletons hanging from the ceiling. Not the way to break in a 4 year old who is scared of just about anything. Laura's initial reaction to the museum was this:
It was loud. And scary. And there were giant whales hanging from the ceiling. She did NOT want to go in. I was even a little taken aback. I mean how can you casually walk into a room with these above you? But Laura eventually started to like the museum. In fact, pretty soon, she loved it. LOVED IT. She wanted to see everything, discuss everything, get her picture taken with everything. There were several displays with live fish, which is always a plus to her. She hurried us along so that she could check out everything. I could tell she was feeling brave because she even went into the fake tree that had fake bats hanging in it. A huge step for our scaredy cat! The museum even had a very small butterfly conservatory which we went into. Butterflies were flying all around, which was a dream come true for Laura!

Here's a few more pictures from our time there.

Laura with some fishy friends.

Laura and MORE fish. She really seems to like fish.
Laura took a picture of me and the Army Man in front of a T. Rex skull. I think we may have a future photographer on our hands.

This picture was taken before we almost lost our lunch. The floor above the dinosaurs was all about bugs, and one display in particular caught our attention. Several small enclosures had different bugs in them, with a small window to look in on the action. Now most of the displays in this museum features either animals that were once alive, but no longer, or very good replicas. The bugs were so still that I was convinced they were fake.

I was looking in the window at the hissing cockroaches, marveling at how many there were, how accurate they looked, and how gross it would be if they were actually real. Of course, right on cue, one moved rather violently and scared me to death. So they were real. Mystery solved. For once in her life Laura was not running away screaming from bugs so we decided to stay as long as she wanted. I remarked that it must be so awful to be the worker to open up the top of the cage and drop the food in to the cockroaches. And again, right on cue, the top opened up and a hand appeared, scaring me to death, AGAIN. The hand saw Laura, and waved. How sweet, I thought. And then the hand decided to put on a show for us.

First, the hand turned on the light so all the cockroaches started moving around like crazy. Laura was still watching, intrigued. The Army Man and I held our ground, being brave. The hand dropped some food in. Laura kept watching. I inched away. Then the hand PICKED UP A COCKROACH. And then another, and another. The hand PLAYED with them. Laura was still watching in awe. I was on the other side of the room, hyperventilating, trying not to squeal like the little girl I am. Even the Army Man was effected. It was disgusting. And I am proud to say that Laura, she who is scared of everything, stayed right there the entire time, watching the hand play with the roaches.

After that we were pretty much done. All that was left to do was get a memento of our trip. Laura picked a butterfly net, and is desperate to capture a butterfly. It's about 30 degrees right now so I think she'll have to wait a while. I did get a picture of her attempts as we left the museum. The Army Man tried it out too, but I won't embarrass him with that picture. I'll save it for another time.