American Girl Dolls and Lipgloss -Great! Building full of dead things- Not so much.

This summer we are going to be taking a couple of day trips to fun places instead of our usual trip to York Beach, Maine. We love the beach desperately, but it's so expensive. We also sent our oldest daughter camping for a week and that depleted quite a bit of our vacation money. Oh well, she had fun and that's all that counts.

For our first trip, we took the two little girls and my mom to the Peabody Natural History Museum at Yale University. When I was a little girl we would visit my aunt and uncle in New Haven Connecticut and occasionally go to the museum. I always loved it. They have dinosaurs, mummies, and all kids of different Egyptian and Native American artifacts. I just thought it was so cool. I was sure the girls would have a good time there.

Violet did love it. She ran through the whole place just racing from exhibit to exhibit yelling "Look! Dinasohs! Rooaarr!!" It was cute, until I looked up from the Camptosaurus plaque and saw her climbing into the area with the dinosaur bones. Christ kid, I can't put that reconstruction bill on my credit card.

Lila, however, did not have as good a time. It seems that, from a five year old girl's perspective, a building full of skeletons, dead animals, and mummies is not so much interesting as it is creepy. She spent the afternoon being simultaneously petrified at everything she saw and horrified that her parents had brought her there. I felt really bad about that. I still do. This is, afterall, her vacation time too and I terribly misjudged what her idea of fun and interesting is. I guess that I just have such fond memories of visiting the Peabody that I wanted that for her. The only vacations we ever took as a kid were to New Haven to see family and a few trips to the museum. I can remember savoring every sight. The shrunken head, the mummy in her glass case (still wearing her bracelets!), and the dinosaurs! I was always so amazed that there were actual dinosaur remains within a few feet of me. But as much as Lila is like me, this was just not her bag, baby. Maybe we'll try again in a couple of years and maybe she'll like it better. And maybe she won't. That will be ok, too. There's always the gift shop. That's one part of the place she did enjoy. I bought her a lovely and soft stuffed Triceratops for a whopping $20. Ouch.

I'm thinking about the New England Aquarium in Boston for our next trip. I will be sure to show her the website first, because I really want her to have fun. And if all else fails, there is always a trip to the mall for this.

Lila and the skeleton of a 1.6 million year old Homo Erectus. The plaque says it was most likely an 8 year old boy. She was not impressed.


Lila and the largest Sea Turtle ever caught. That thing was frickin huge!


The mummified remains of an Egyptian female. These have been at the museum since I was a kid.


Violet & Lila & the T-Rex head.


Lila and the baby Camptosaurus. There was a bigger one behind this one.