Port Discovery for a 2 Year Old

With the Curious George exhibit at Port Discovery closing this weekend, we decided to take Noah so he could play around with George and see the museum. Now, I had never been to Port Discovery, but I think Shannon had gone, or had gotten feedback from her mom, saying that she didn't think Noah would get too much out for it, definitley not the $13 admission price worth...But, since George was there, we were going to try it anyway. Even though little man is just 2, I think he gets a lot out of exhibits for 3 and 4 year olds too because...well, he talks like one :-P A lot of 2 year olds we meet are just putting 2 or 3 words together. Noah puts full sentences together! Anecdote to kick this off, they have a VW Bug on the 1st floor for kids to play with. I mean, a FULL SIZE VW Bug. So Noah climbs in to drive the wheel...What's the first thing he does? HE REACHES UP TO BUCKLE THE SEATBELT. I'm dumbfounded...Then, he moves to the radio and says "I'm going to turn on the radio" and starts turning up the volume knob and hitting buttons. Yeah, I think he's a bit of a smart cookie there...

So anyway, we parked, paid, and headed in. First floor has a couple of things, we skipped some stuff in the museum to try to prioritize what Noah would want to see...so from what we did/saw, the first floor has a big soccer court which Noah ran around on for awhile, didn't get much actual soccer in though but he was having fun. We moved onto the "store" exhibit, which was a Royal Farms setup with play food boxes, bottles, and cans, cash register, etc. Also had the VW Bug and gas pump. Thing we skipped in the first floor is "KidWorks". I'd probably say that is the "Crown Jewel" of Port Discovery, as it's a big jungle gym/learning stations which go through ALL 3 floors...like you go in at floor 1, go through the stations climbing upwards, and end up at Floor 3. The ages on that one is 4 and up, and 4-6 is meant to stick to the first floor, so...yeah, we skipped that.

Floor 2 greeted us with a train setup, with a crane type thing to pick up boxes. Noah's takeway from this...sitting on the train and trying to find a steering wheel. So, after finding the engine of the train and letting him get about 5 mins solid of steering a wheel, we headed to the "Sensation Station", which is designed for little ones. Things in this room are a little playset with a slide, climbing stuff, etc...appropriate for infant-4yo, water tubes with bubbles, ball pit, lots of toddler toys. Noah's takeaway from this..."Hey look...a LAWNMOWER". Yes, the toy he plays with all the time at home and daycare is the toy he spent about 10 minutes playing with in that place. You know, you can try to figure out toddlers all you want, but they know what they like...Eventually, I convinced him to try out the ballpit, which he proceeded to get buried in. He loved that a lot too.

Eventually, we pushed on and decided to just head to floor 3. This was supposed to be the big attraction...CURIOUS GEORGE. Now, I watch Curious George the cartoon on PBS with Noah in the mornings. Seeing the characters and things, I expected there would be lots of fun things he'd want to play with and we'd have a solid hour of him playing there. A lot of the exhibits though, went a little over Noah's head. Maybe he just wasn't in the mood, but the ones I can remember:

Shadow Wall - Noah liked this mainly for the spinning wheel for different light colors

Elevator/Mail Box doors (You could open these and see what was there) - Noah liked opening (and slamming shut) the elevator doors

Construction Zone (Big conveyor belt to carry blocks up about 7 feet, then roll down a series of rollers to come back to the ground) - Noah only like the wheel you turn to push the blocks up...And he wanted to DRIVE the wheel, not turn it in one direction only

Playing with Wind - Noah did like this one, you had big blowers which you could use to try to turn windmills and ring windchimes.

Build Your Own Windmill - Tinkertoys you could make a windmill out of and fans to test it, but a lot of tinkertoys were missing

Grocery Store - This would've been fun, you could take plush groceries and sort them, weigh them, etc. But they only had 3 plush groceries...2 watermelons and 1 pear. Guessing most of them were taken or moved or...idk

Make Your Own Pinwheel or Windsock - This place was a mess, it was a station where you could take paper, use scissors/holepunch/other tools, and make a craft project per directions on the station. But it looked like it'd been ravaged already, we just decided to skip it at that point

Stuffed Animals - They had little rabbit/bird houses which had stuffed animals. Also a big tree which had a squirrel's hole. Noah played with those a lot too.

So, all that considered, Noah got some out of the George exhibit, but for some reason I expected there to be more "play" stuff. A lot of the exhibits seemed to be geared a little older (Ding ding ding to Shannon, she was right...Fully admitted), so Noah didn't get interested in them. So, after about 15 mins or so, we moved on...

The thing Noah loved the most was the WATER ROOM. Holy crap, that could've been where we got our money's worth. So, in this water room, there are:

Big Spout Area - This was a raised floor, slatted to let water drain, with a bunch of small spouts sticking out of the floor where water was coming up. You could then take various pipes and build water fountains out of it. Noah just liked spilling the water all on himself (Disclaimer, they did have raincoats and crocs available for borrowing, we just let Noah go to it in his regular clothes). They also have a station with two water guns where you can shoot different music instruments to make different sounds, Noah liked this too.

Water Table - HUGE, about 20-25 foot long table which sloped downwards...Different areas...at the top was a raincloud which kept water flowing into the area. Right after this, you could build channels with little walls. After this, you could either dam up the water, or create a lock (I didn't get to play with...I mean, Noah didn't get to play with this, so we didn't get to see how cool it was.) After this were various toys you could play in the water with. At the end, there was a "1 and under" exhibit which was a shallow crate sitting right above the water. I can only guess you would put your 1 year old in the crate to let them experience the water, seemed weird to me. They also had spray bottles at the end of the table you could use to spray and then squeegie the windows of the Water Room right beside the Water Table.

Big Bubble - The thing we got to play with at the Gettysburg Explore&More museum...only this one was run by the person INSIDE the bubble. Also, you had to bring this one up VERY slowly to get it to work. But, was still fun.

Sink or Float - Whole bunch of items you can toss into an aquarium to see if it sinks of floats, you can then use a lever to lift a sifting pan to retrieve objects. Noah just liked throwing things in water and playing with the lever.

Building a Boat - Legos and a water table where you could try building a boat that floats. Only one boat that I could see, but Noah just wanted to throw Legos in the water anyway

BIG DRYER - Before you leave, they have a heat lamp and a wall of blowers to try to dry some water off you. I like that one.

After about 2 hours there, we knew Noah was hungry, Shannon wasn't feeling well, so we decided to wait for the 1pm "Meet Curious George" event then leave. At 1:05, no one had come yet. Not even a museum employee to say "We're running late". Noah didn't seem to care either way, so we just left.

Overall, my impression of Port Discovery...I think Noah will get a lot out of them in 2-3 years. As smart as he is for his age, some of these exhibits are just not that appealing to him right now. Until then, there's lots of other places which are not as expensive and crowded where we can let him explore and play. But, I will give them that they had a LOT of things to explore there. But, $13 is a pretty good chunk of change, so we'll probably wait a couple of years before taking him back there.

The rush of the party

The buildup for Noah's 2nd birthday party has actually been like a month and a half long. It was supposed to be on the 15th, and we spent the week before that preparing...only for Noah to catch Foot and Mouth Disease the night before and we had to postpone two weeks. So, we then spent two weeks fixing up the living room with new paint and new furniture, and then re-cleaning the house.

This morning, our to-do list was mowing the lawn, cleaning, and then cold prep. We got up at 7am to start it all, for an 11am party. We worked ALL the way up to 11 to get things ready! Not sure if we're just inefficient or what, but it seemed like we just ran out of time to do everything, so we rushed getting things done up to 11. Then we enjoyed about the first 15-20 mins of greeting people and letting them see the house and backyard.

Then it was grilling time. I've never grilled for more than the three of us plus one guest. So now facing grilling for 20 people...yikes. So as a decision made way back, we decided to grab a big box of frozen Kunzler hot dogs and 2 boxes of Bubba Burgers from BJ's. So, first lesson learned...frozen hamburgers are easy to break off and throw on a grill...hot dogs not at all! I managed to "break" 2 or 3 off intact, then I had to run water over the whole package to get any more to thaw enough to seperate, and that took another 10 mins. Noah took a spill during this, so I ran to help him and we got him ice. So by the time I finally got everything ready to throw on the grill, it had pre-heated for about 20 mins. Uh oh...

So second lesson learned...Bubba Burgers must be pretty high fat content. As soon as I threw those things on the grill, LOTS of smoke started pouring out. If anyone took pictures of me during grilling, I must've looked like I'd had acid poured in my eyes. I couldn't see anything because of the smoke singing my eyeballs! I guess I'm just used to 80/20 or 93/7 ground beef fresh hamburgers. My first instinct was blaming the frozen hot dogs for causing the smoke, but it was definitley the effect of throwing 12 Bubba Burgers on the grill. I felt bad for anyone who had to walk past my towering inferno of a grill during this time. Quality wise, I think the Bubba Burgers dried out a bit more. That could've been because I was trying to juggle turning hot dogs really often, grill the burgers, and get the smoke out of my eyes at the same time. In hindsight, better to get the hot dogs done seperately of the burgers. Also better to focus on 3-6 burgers at a time, not 12.

But in the end, I fed everyone, we have leftovers, and no one complained about the food. Not sure if they were just being nice. If they are, please tell me, it won't hurt my feelings. I'm trying to work my way to becoming a grill master here. I also need to remember to clean the side of my grill, those Bubba Burgers left a TON of grease on the spatula, which was then transferred to the side pieces on the grill when I set the spatula down. Oh yeah, and I need to find the one hot dog that fell behind the grill before a ton of bugs take up residence on my porch.

In any case, a big step in my education of grilling.

Since when did little man turn into a fraidy cat?

All of a sudden this week, Noah seems to be afraid of everything. Up until this point, he's had maybe one or two episodes where he got spooked by something, we couldn't figure out what, but sitting with him calmed him down...But then Mom had mentioned he's had a few times at daycare where he's been seemingly afraid of the ceiling fan in the room he naps in. For any of you who know, his first word was "round and round" because he likes watching fans. So, that was weird, but it only seemed to happen there...

Then Monday, everything seemed to hit the fan (no pun intended). Started out with a trip to Sakura. Noah LOVES them, especially "BIG FIRE". He calls it the fire place. So he was in a great mood, sitting in his high chair, eating soup. Chef comes over, starts setting up, lights the big fire...and Noah loses it. He immediately says "WANT TO GO BYE-BYE!!!!!!" Odd, but hey, a big puff of flame probably is a scary thing, so we calm him down. That night, we go up to his room for night night..."You okay then fan? YOU OKAY THE FAN???? I don't like my room!" At this point, I'm just dumbfounded. I turned the fan down, he seemed to be okay...weird.

On Wednesday, a new fear emerged...the shadow. Well, actually, it wasn't the shadow, but rather light coming through the back door. But since I don't know what to call that, it becomes shadow. This freaked Noah out, but I was able to mostly get over that one by taking him up to it and playing shadow games with it.

So yesterday, my stay at home day with him...he lost it big time. He discovered the front room, which was the office way back, now the guest room. It has a low ceiling, so no fan. Well apparently, he has fallen in love with this room because he stayed in it for about 2 hours yesterday. Any time I tried to get him to go to the more kid-friendly living room, no dice, he freaked out. When it came time for nap, he decided he wants to sleep in the front room. Not Noah's room, don't like Noah's room...Not Mommy and Daddy's room, don't like that room. I gave up on naptime after a bit of pouting and tantrum, finally got him to sit downstairs with me. He then goes to sleep, so I laid him down in his room.

It's just all very confusing to me. Half the time, he's fine with fans because he sits in the living room with us and the fan runs almost all the time there. I guess it's just discovering new things and seeing things in different ways. Just hope he doesn't let it flip him out too much, summer is coming soon and if he gets to the point with no fan, i'm not sure how he's going to sleep. Especially if he keeps trying that fan-less front room. Then again, he went to sleep tonight fine with the fan on.