Thursday, February 11, 2021Day Three Hundred Twenty-Eight
Am I seriously going to squeeze a THIRD blog post out of a single visit to the Carnegie Museums? YES, I AM. That's what happens when life is a never-ending circle of staying home, other than dragging kids to and from dance. Which, let's be honest, the dance studio is essentially Alexis' home so really I just usher her from one of her homes to the other over and over.
We haven't been getting out much is what I'm saying.
And we hadn't been to the Natural History Museum in ... two years? Three? It had been more than a hot minute, that's for sure. It had been long enough for Alexis to grow up enough to finally appreciate the art side of the complex. At this point, she's begging me to drop her off there so she can spend hours staring at paintings. The last time we were there, she thought I was torturing her, so yay?
And Mila. Mila has been there before, but she saw it with all new eyes this time.
I don't know what prompted her to question the origins of the taxidermied animals scattered throughout, but there was this super awkward moment when Mila went from being sweet and innocent and very oblivious to KNOWING.
Hellfire rained down as smoke rose from Mila's ears and laser beams blasted from her eyes. She was NOT happy. "But why would someone kill a baby bear? It was just being happy and living its life!" You know, there is probably a reasonable explanation for it, but I'm over here representing Team Vegetarian and Alexis is straight-up a vocal animal rights advocate and ... I dunno? We really couldn't think of a way to make it make sense to Mila. I'm sure there is one, but let's not ask the vegetarians be the ones to come up with excuses for collecting dead animals, okay? It is NOT our skill set.
Mila went from one display to the next being very angry about the dead state of things. There are a LOT of dead things to be seen, and each one brought on a new level of anger. The bunnies were perhaps the worst because, as Mila said, "LOOK! They were in the middle of having fun when someone killed them."
By the way, it was not sadness. It was ANGER. Like, Mila legit is out for blood. She wants to know who is responsible and she has words for that person. Lots of words. And possibly revenge.
Go ahead and guess how she reacted to seeing the stuffed dogs. That little display pushed Mila into a new stage of grief. She went from disbelief to anger to ... pure sadness. So much sadness. She legit sobbed for 10 minutes because dogs are the best as far as she's concerned.
There was a tiny bit of good news, though. After seeing so much death and sadness, Mila happened upon the fake people. She froze in her tracks, wide-eyed and innocent, and said, "Please tell me those aren't real people." I had an answer she liked for that one!
Day Three Hundred Twenty-Seven
I mentioned that I'm an inch short of being desperate to get Mila to give in and start reading, and that's exactly how it came to be that I decided I'd pay her to do it. There is NOTHING that kid won't do for a dollar or two. It makes no sense since she has no concept of money, can't tell you how much she has at any point in time, and doesn't know what things cost, but I take advantage of all of those things with much frequency. $0.10 per word it is! Redeemable only at the Carnegie Museums Gift Shop!
Hahahaha ... whoops? My plan really did work and Mila happily read about 30 words while we were there, but that's probably about as many as she COULD read there because it's a dinosaur museum hahahahalolz. There's a lot of big words spelled out on very tiny signs. Mila did use a fair amount of energy wandering to find words that she could potentially read, and even put effort into sounding things out, so I'll call it a victory even if I did sort of set her up for failure.
You can't really get anything at the gift shop for $3.
I didn't want to let the situation end in failure, so I ended up telling Mila she could pick a stuffed animal. She needs another stuffed animal like I need a hug (which is to say, NOT at all), but it's what she really wanted so whatever.
There was a catch, though. Since the kid had only read about 30 words, I decided she should have to read a book to me later in the evening and THEN I would trade her for the stuffed animal. Mila agreed to this plan and we got in line to pay.
And then Mila proved that she's a hell of a lot smarter than all of the rest of us. As we were standing in line, she noticed a wall of books. "What if I read you one of THOSE books?"
I'll be damned if the kid didn't con me into buying her a book AND a stuffed animal. She made good and did read the book to me, but it cost me $30 to get her to read maybe 200 words.
Okay, fine, it was worth it.
