Staten Island Children's Museum

a couple of weeks ago we drove the girls out the Staten Island Children's Museum, which is pretty impressive. we had a long, great afternoon

you can see mette walking around in a fireman's suit (they provide them with full miniature firemen's gear)

driving an old-fashioned firetruck

the museum is organized into several distinct zones - several of them are biospheres (Artic, Tropical, and the Ocean) in which the kids are cast as explorers, complete with more outfits for dressing up. Here we are running sled dogs through the artic. There is a video monitor in front of the sled that shows sled dogs running through the snow, and when the driver steps onto the skids and begins to rock back and forth, the sled and video react for a kind of 'virtual' Iditerod.

Mette pulling herself across the Amazon(?) on a river raft (to fight a fire?)

Hennie in a rainforest hut

Mette suiting up to dive into the ocean



A radio studio

in the artic zone they had this climbing wall, and when hege and i weren't looking hennie jumped up on it and actually doing a really good job of navigating it. I was honestly so proud of her - she wasn't scared and seemed to instinctively understand the sport - she was carefully choosing each hold and mapping out her next move very patiently and logically. when she'd fall, she'd jump back onto the 'mountain' as if she was attacking it.

expert form! she could have played on this thing for an hour. I love these pictures.

we could easily install a mini wall in our basement; i'm thinking about it halfway seriously.