Wednesday

We spent this morning and early afternoon at the Pittsburg Kids' Museum -- a must stop for anyone stoping into this city. It is different from the Indy kids' museum but probably just as good. Lots of Mr. Rodger's stuff -- the set, his sneakers, the puppets, etc. Julia and a number of kids her age did not have any connections with Mr. Rodgers, but the fun stuff in the room, including a player piano with all sorts of percussion instruments as well as the piano was a bit hit. Lots of art stuff -- the first thing we did was visit the studio and Julia painted, make a monoprint and some paper. Her paintings (two of them) were just circles, but very controlled and designed. She did not want the brushes provided with the paints and found thicker brushes and was very careful with them. (Brush lessons seem to have sunk in!) It is hard to believe that less than a year ago, this girl was painting wild archs and mixing colors with abandon. She counted her circles (not necessarily correctly) and liked using very thick paint. Her print was a picture of herself and Daddy with clouds.


There was so much more -- water play (for which I should have brought a change of clothes), an attic with puppets and dress up, a workshop with motor parts and all sorts of ways to put stuff in the air, a motion generated music room which Julia spent a long time figuring out, a shadow space with falling letters that sat on your shadow (not at all for kids only). We spent four hours there and is we didn't have an event to go to tonight, we would have stayed longer.

Much later -- We went to Kennywood -- Pittsburgh's very own amusement park. Ummm, it has been an amusement park for over 100 years. There are landmark markers all over the place. Unfortunately, times has not been kind to the park. There are a few old wooden rollercoasters and lots of places to buy stuff to eat. Julia had a great time on all of the kiddy rides and loved when we were able to go on a few of the rides with her. Honestly, there was no way either David or I were going to fit into the Dumbo elephants. David rode with her on the bumpy turtles and the bus that goes up and down. I rode in the cars and went with Julia on the Log Flume which she decided was too scary. I have pictures to post. It was fun and we had our amusement park quota for the summer!