We finally arrived at the Museum of Science and Industry, and we discover the very best invention for a family of sleep laters like us – it’s called the Central Time Zone!! Have you heard of this fabulous creature? As we are pulling up to the museum and I am bitching casually mentioning to my husband that we are an hour behind schedule, BAM! He hits me with this incredible Central Time Zone thing and we’re back at 9:30 in the morning – just in time for the museum to open!
We head inside, and the first thing the kids want to see is the inside of the ladies room. My kids seem to have some sort of incredible, built in potty radar, and whenever we are near a new, unfamiliar rest room, they have to try it out. As we are leaving the restroom and heading upstairs, I realize that even though the stairs are moving, I am not on an escalator. Then when I get to the top of the stairs and the room starts revolving, I have to take back my wonder and amazement at the incredible technology on display at the museum and admit that my sugars are crashing. So much for trusting that the syrup in my morning latte was sugar free.
So, while the girls admired the giant Swiss pinball machine, I grabbed a bite to eat at the food court. I wanted to bring my sugars up quickly, but they didn’t have anything like what I would have used at home – peanut butter and bananas or peanut butter crackers. So I did what any responsible adult facing unstable sugars would do – I bought a piece of iced lemon pound cake and a large chocolate chip/M&M cookie, and prayed. Okay – I shared the pound cake and the cookie, but still risked an even bigger crash later on – but it was all they had. I couldn’t even find a piece of fruit, that might have helped just as much.
Onward…
We – meaning me – made the decision to go see the 10:30 show Poop Happens. You would understand why I thought this was an appropriate show for my family if you had driven the 13 hours from Jersey to Chicago with the lot of them sharing one of those natural biological processes that we all wish people would keep to themselves. Did I mention that our rental car has a window that doesn’t roll down?
Because of the wonder of the Central Time Zone, we are way early for the Poop Happens show, and we decide to see whether Granuaile or Eilis can hook up a cow to a milking machine faster (let’s just say Granuaile should not quit her day job – but taking into consideration her age, she wasn’t too far behind Eilis’ time), then we went over to the Idea Factory, where the kids played in the water and put puzzles together, and Granuaile ran around like Agustus Gloop in the Chocolate Factory.
The Poop Happens show was hysterical – at least watching Eilis and Granuaile sitting in front of us laughing hysterically like a couple of kids telling, well, telling Poop jokes. The show was entertaining, teaching the kids the whole process of digestion in kid friendly terms. I spent most of the show wondering if the one kid who acted in the show’s name was really “Dash” – since the other actor did call him “Daschle” instead of Dash at one point – because I think that’s kind of a cool name for a boy. And how do I convince Jim that we need to adopt a little boy, so I can name him Daschle. Okay, so it would have to be two little boys, because Jim always said he’d want to name our first son Jim, Junior. And then I wonder if we’d be on this trip with two little girls AND two little boys, and what mental hospital I’d be most comfortable in if we did do this trip with four children, all farting and giggling behind me in a car with a window that doesn’t roll down. Wait – where was I?
Back in the museum after the show, we check out a few more exhibits before realizing that our children are headed for a lack of sleep melt down. In the nick of time, with only one of them on the verge of tears, we head to the gift shop, where I promised she could look around and spend a little of her money. The shopping spree yields a valuable cache of an astronaut ice cream sandwich and a ball of owl puke. Yes, owl puke. Apparently, it’s great fun and exceedingly educational to pick apart owl puke to determine what the owls had for lunch. Yeah – I have hidden the owl puke in a bag among the luggage, hoping they forget about it by the time we get home. $5 well spent.
Gifts in hand, crabby children in tow, we set out to continue on the journey. There may be a something wonderful in the next leg of the trip….