Weekend Post

Friday night Ken and I had the pleasure of attending the Opening Gala of the new Please Touch Museum in Memorial Hall, a Beaux Arts building that was home to the 1876 Bicentennial Celebration -- and then the original home of the Philadelphia Art Museum. For years the building had languished and deteriorated, but it has been restored to its original grandeur, and it is now home to a 38,000 square-foot museum for children seven and under. The space is both breathtaking and overwhelming and truly a crown jewel for Philadelphia. I can't wait to take Bryn, who will love the "shoe store" where she can measure my foot and try on a huge selection of shoes from around the world, and Luke, who will never leave the car where he can sit at the driver's seat and push buttons on the dashboard until his heart's content. When the grandparents come to visit, there's a human-size hamster wheel to try and an interesting exhibit in which you build a toy airplane from foam pieces and then compete to see whose has the best loft. (We learned that heavier models fall faster.) On Monday we've been invited to bring the kids to a donor's brunch, so B&L will also get a sneak preview of the museum before it opens to the public next Saturday. Stay tuned for pictures...

Saturday we had every intention of going as a family to a church fair in Wayne that's been held the first Saturday in October for the past 150+ years. But when the toilet in the mudroom began overflowing -- and wouldn't stop, Ken sent me and the kids on our way. Our first stop was building our own scarecrow with clothes that members of the congregation had donated. Luke had little patience for this project, so I got some assistance from one of the fair's volunteers. Bryn picked out our scarecrow's wardrobe, including strawberry hat, and did a lovely job of creating our scarecrow's face with button eyes and pieces of felt for its nose, cheeks and mouth. We haven't yet given the scarecrow a name, but he now sits happily against the beech tree in our front yard. Bryn rode a pony, and the three of us rode a little train, but by then it was after noon and approaching Luke's naptime, so we left before exhausting all that the fair had to offer.

Sunday we visited my Aunt Jeanie in Barnesville, PA, which is about two hours away. Bryn had suffered from a low-grade fever on Saturday but exhibited no other symptoms -- and was even running up and down the driveway by dinner time. So we were all taken by surprise when she vomited about an hour into the trip. We don't know if Bryn's getting sick was related to her not feeling 100% or whether she merely got car sick for the first time in a very long time. I didn't pack a change of clothes for either B or L, so we got really lucky that Bryn leaned forward and missed most of her clothes. Bryn was lethargic when we first got to Jeannie's house, but strong as an ox, she pulled through, and delighted -- as did Luke-- in searching for and petting Jeannie's two cats -- Cocoa (the friendlier one) and Bonnie Blue (the more reclusive of the two.) Fortunately, Bryn was fine on the way home, and she seems to have recovered from whatever was bothering her.