fun in the city

On our very first day back to the States, we got a family membership to the aquarium--of course. Juma still wants to be a marine biologist. The downtown area that is full of museums, shops, and the sites of the Inner Harbor is within walking distance of where we are staying. (Walking distance for us, anyway; it's a good 15 blocks. Juma gets to ride his scooter for such big walks.)



At the aquarium, we saw awesome jellyfish, these among them:



Lots of sharks and rays:



And also a dolphin show. But mostly we just enjoyed being together. Also, Juma has gotten to the stage where he can't take a normal picture.

sea horse

One of our friends gave Juma a dried sea horse. We thought this one was a pretty big one, but he said they are often much bigger, a good foot tall!

mom's in town

My mom came to visit Juma and me for 10 days, and we've been running to and fro seeing the sights and keeping ourselves entertained.

Friday, we dropped Juma off at summer camp and then saw Harry Potter 6, which was quite entertaining. Saturday, we dropped Juma off at a babysitter's and took the train into New York City to see Mamma Mia! on Broadway. Also quite entertaining, and I've had Abba songs stuck in my head ever since. We got back around seven, picked up Juma, ate dinner, then gabbed into the night (as mothers and daughters do).

Sunday after Mom went to church, we visited Yale's two art galleries, where we saw everything from portraits of the British leisure class with their favorite dogs to 5000 year old pots from China to Buddha's footprints to carved masks from southern Tanzania.

Next, we took an afternoon stroll around a lovely city park that used to be a private estate, and is still surrounded by a stone fence that seems to belong in a Jane Austen movie. I had to be home for work after that, so we relaxed and watched Nacho Libre, giggling our faces off at Jack Black's funnies.

Today we got a slow, summer vacation start on the day. Since this is Juma's only "real" summer vacation week where he doesn't have any summer day camps to go to, he took advantage of his leisure time by watching Sponge Bob Square Pants all morning. And I do mean all morning. I had a little work to attend to once again, but around noon we took a quick tour of the Yale library, then I sent Mom and Juma off to the public library while I had another appointment.

This afternoon we introduced Mom to the Peabody Museum of Natural History, a long-time staple of entertainment and education in our family. I realized we've been going there for six years, since before Juma could say much more than "Die-saur! Raarrr!" Now it's, "No, Mom, that's a mosasaur, not a plesiosaur," and, "Hey, they moved the triceratops skulls. But where's the torosaurus?"

After those trips, we were 10,000-step pooped-out, and just relaxed the rest of the evening.

today's activity

The church Justin works for has a small Sunday school class, and they invited Juma along to their activity today at a local marine preservation/education organization. Juma will be going there for a summer day camp in August, so we were eager to see what it is like.

He had fun painting a shirt with a flounder on it. When he gave the flounder red spots, I asked him what the spots were for.

"Cuts," he said simply.

Oh, boy, why did I ask?

Then he painted a speech bubble saying, "run" and a shark coming down to bite the flounder (again?). Is he a 6-year-old boy or what?




Next, the kids got to see and hold welks, sea snails, mud crabs, and a large horseshoe crab--all species that live in the sound.

stage 2: Grand Canyon

We said good-bye to our families in Utah and headed south down 89 to the Arizona and the Grand Canyon. None of us had seen the Canyon, so we were excited. On the way, we stopped at Fremont Indian State Park



and saw some amazing petroglyphs (carvings in the rock) and pictographs (paint on the rocks). None of which you can see in this picture unless you click on it to see the bigger version:




In the evening we made it to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It was amazing and gorgeous, and a little scary. Parents of a budding scientist that we are, we took the chance to talk geology, the power of water on rocks, geologic time, and in which layers exactly could trilobites and sharks be found. (Juma's on a trilobite and shark kick lately.)

volcano

One of Juma's science books instructed us how to build a vinegar and baking soda volcano. We poured into a soda bottle some apple cider vinegar, food coloring and dish soap to make it more impressive. Then we built up newspaper and tin foil to make it look like a volcano. Finally, we took it outside and plopped some baking soda into it.





And waited.

And waited.

Huh?

I poured in some more vinegar and baking soda to boost the explosion.

And we waited.

What the?

I picked up the vinegar bottle again to pour some more in, looking at the label as I did so.

Oops--it was not apple cider vinegar like I thought. It was just apple cider.

We went back inside to find something acidic to replace the vinegar. There was some lime juice, so Juma poured that in, and I added more baking soda again.




Finally, the bubbles formed enough to come out the top of the soda bottle.





Juma then enjoyed spreading the "lava" all around the dirt and rocks, pretending to destroy buildings. Little boys and lava, I tell ya.

mondays

Last night when I was putting Juma to bed, we had our usual discussion about whatever is on his mind.

Juma: Mom, I hate Mondays.

Sarah: Lots of people hate Mondays, honey.

Juma: But, Mom, I really hate Mondays.

Sarah: Why?

Juma: Because on Monday, that means that there's another day I have to go to school, and then another, and then another, and then ANOTHER!

Sarah: Yep, that's true. Good night, bud.

Juma: But wait, Mom.

Sarah: What?

Juma: Just kidding, I mean I love Mondays.

Sarah: How come?

Juma: Because that means I get to go learn stuff the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day so I can grow up to be a scientist!

dragons

Juma: Dragons are real, you know.

Sarah: Are they? How do you know?

Juma: Because.

Sarah: I thought they were just pretend. Is there any evidence that dragons are real? Where do they live?

Juma: They live in Africa.

Sarah: Really? I've been to Africa, but I've never seen any dragons.

Juma: They're really hard to see.

Sarah: Are they invisible?

Juma: No. They just have camouflage. Really good camouflage.

Sarah: Oh! But what do they eat?

Juma: pause Elephants.

Sarah: Wow. Let's talk about that some more. What evidence so we have that they are real, and what evidence do we have that they are pretend?

Juma: They're real! Uh-huh, they are!

Sarah: Hmm. Well, I've never seen one in a science book. How come scientists haven't seen them?

Juma: Camouflage.

Sarah: But if scientists thought they were really real, I bet they'd try really hard to find one, so they could take pictures and study them.

Juma: They live far, far away in Africa.

Sarah: So do giraffes and lions and hippos, but we've seen all those.

Juma: They hide real good. In the grass. They have lots of little green spikes that come out all over, looks like grass.

Sarah: Then how come we haven't seen any dragon bones, like we do for dinosaurs, mammoths, horses?

Juma: They sink way down, down, down into the ground.

Sarah: Oh? How come the dinosaur fossils didn't sink way down?

Juma: The dragon bones are really, really heavy.

Sarah: If the bones are so heavy, how do they fly and walk?

Juma: Well, they're kind of heavy, and kind of light.

Sarah: I see. You know where I've seen dragons? In books of pretend stories.

Juma: trying to please me They're just pretend.

Sarah: People talk about them in make-believe, and that's okay! It's really fun to believe in make-belief stuff, and tell stories about them. Dragons are cool in stories!

Juma: They're real.

Sarah: Well, we don't have evidence that they are. And we do have evidence that they aren't. Do you know what evidence we have that they aren't?

Juma: shakes head

Sarah: Well, lots of people all over the world have stories about dragons. But in those stories, the dragons are always different. In China, in Africa, in Europe, always different. Even the dragon you told me about, it's different. That tells me the dragons are in people's imaginations. 'Cause horses? In all the stories that have horses, they're always the same. They look like the horses we know about in real life.

Juma: slight dismayed But they're real.

Sarah: It's okay to think about dragons, honey. They're fun, aren't they?

The next day, Juma was having a conversation about dinosaurs with his cousins. He turned to me.

Juma: to Sarah, earnestly Wait, how do we know dinosaurs are real?

Sarah: Because we can see their bones.

Juma: satisfied Oh, right. Right. Dinosaurs are real.

dinosaurs!

Yesterday, Juma and I went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point with Juma's cousin Ammon, Grandpa and Grandma Wilson, Grandma Beckham, Aunt Andria, and Aunt Jody (Ammon's mom). Yes, the ratio was 3 adults to 1 child. (Justin would have come, but his ankle is still really bad.)

Juma and Ammon had fun acting like paleontologists



building a foam dinosaur



checking out the 4-year old boys' favorite, the T-rex (this museum has 2 of them!)



and learning how ancient Greeks thought mammoth bones belonged to Cyclops

air & space museum

Since we arrived in Washington, DC at 5:30pm, we missed the airplane museum. Juma was disappointed and grumpy, so our friend Erik suggested another air and space museum between Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska. We were running late the day through Iowa, and pushed to make it to the museum before closing so Juma wouldn't have his hopes crushed twice. We pulled up at 4:50pm and raced inside only to be told the museum would close in 8 minutes. Justin put on his charm and got us those 8 minutes without the entrance fee.

The museum had numerous actual planes, including ones that were used in WWII and a Blackbird. Juma was in heaven, though a little intimidated by how absolutely large the planes looked so close up.



A space rocket


Another rocket

chicago

Even though we went to bed quite late Saturday night, Juma woke up at 7am. Of course. We just chilled for 3 hours, telling Juma every 2 minutes to keep his voice down until Justin's brother Cameron woke up at 10 o'clock. By noon, we'd made it into the city. "On the blue line" metro, as Juma would tell you.

After lunch, we visited the Art Institute of Chicago. There, we saw paintings by Seurat, Picasso, and van Gogh, among other amazing things. From there, we walked through Millenium Park, then on to Navy Pier, where Juma refused to ride the ferris wheel. Next, the grown-ups had just as much fun in the Children's Museum as Juma did.





After leaving the museum, and watching a clown/pirate/ juggler/comedian for too long, we set out to look for dinner, but a sudden downpour of rain kept us from going two feet out the door. A Bubba Gump Shrimp, Co restaurant happened to be right there, so we enjoyed shrimp, steak, fish, and dessert. As Juma described the apple crisp, "You should definitely try this crust, it is definitely so, so good. Mmm, mmm."

We had planned to drive on to Omaha today, but since there's so much to do in Chicago, we decided to stay an extra day. We've bought tickets to the evening's White Sox/Yankees game, but weather.com promised rain.

celery is thirsty

Juma and Justin did an experiment to see how celery "drinks" water.


We can see the blue and red water seeped right up to the top.


Juma says of this experiment, "We let it drink water for, like, a long time."

science experiments

Juma's been demonstrating a keen interest in science lately, especially outer space and dinosaurs, so we got him a little science experiments kit for Christmas. These are some of the experiments we've tried:

Soak a raw egg (in the shell) in vinegar for at least 15 hours. Then drop it in the sink and watch it bounce, not break. The shell will become rubbery, due to some chemical change I can't recall off the top of my head.

In a very dark room, smash with pliers (or bite) wintergreen candies and see a spark. Alternatively, rub two sugar cubes together and watch them glow.

Gather several small items (paper clips, penny, wood chip, etc) and see which ones you can pick up with a magnet.

Dissolve lots of salt in a 1/2 cup of water in a quart jar. Place a strip of dark construction paper in the jar, and over the next 3 weeks, watch the salt crystals form up the paper.

Fill a plastic water bottle with very warm water. Replace the cap, and let it stand for 1.5 minutes. Remove the cap, pour out the water, then quickly replace the cap. The bottle will "magically" collapse without you touching it. (There's an air pressure change when the air inside the bottle cools.)