We've talked about taking the children for a few years now, but the last time John and I were at the Met, I didn't know he wanted to marry me, which lets you know that too much time has passed between visits.
First stop: the Ancient Egypt wing.
This picture included for the sake of Annika's expression. Her excitement provides the perfect foil for their faces at the end of our stay at the Met.
Susannah took most of the following few pictures. Miniature statues.
Tiny blue hippo.
One of the
guards motioned her over and, in hushed tones, told us the Met's Big
Secret. Apparently, that same blue hippo leaves the case at night,
grows to an immense size, and guards the entire Egyptian wing from burglars. Truth.
Of course she took a picture of a mummy. I think it's funny that she broke it into three sections.
Head.
Torso.
Feet.
Annika got a picture of the whole shebang.
After snapping a few pictures of the hieroglyphs, I looked over to see this dancing gnome-child. I'm pretty sure this is what Nefertiti looked like when she broke it down on the dance floor.
We spent about nine hours in the city (not counting the train rides), and this family, along with other unfortunately frozen families, is the only one we spotted that had more than two children. We exchanged emails, and I'm hoping some city play-dates are in our future. She even cuts her children's bangs like I cut Zeke's!!! Coincidence? I think not.
I could have stayed at the Met all day, but the children petered out after a few hours. The exception was Piper, who despite limited experience, has a strong and faithful love of museums.
Remember Annie's birthday present? John told her that they'd made a statue of her, which made the girls giggle like mad. (There's a BARE BOTTOM there!!!)
There were several rooms I had to backtrack to in order to fetch Pip, who was lost in the paintings.
I hauled all the girls to this room with Giotto's The Adoration of the Magi, which is one of the paintings we studied when we learned about Giotto a few years ago....back when I was a better teacher-mama. (Those were the days.)
The girls (mostly Annie) carted my camera around and took pictures of the paintings they particularly liked. There were many. Here are a few.
I love the rooms that open up out of nowhere in large museums like this. When one's not familiar with the museum, stumbling right into something like this is delightful.
We capped off our visit with the Ancient Greece wing.
By this time, the children's feet were sore, and our brains were foggy with art.
Until we meet again!
You're awesome! I'm such a jerk to my kid when we travel.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I'm a big jerk at too many other times to admit, and when we go to Long Island, we have a 6-hour drive, which is probably right at our limit for happy traveling, whereas you travel 600 or 6,000 or 6 million or some other crazy number of miles. I can't even imagine.
ReplyDeleteAnd our trip into the city took under 2 hours on the train, and the train ride home (CRANKY BABY) wasn't the greatest ( = CRANKY MAMA). Why do you think my children were taking so many pictures of themselves? I was otherwise occupied. :)
After my too-long comment, I realize I probably should have just put this in the blog post to begin with...
Your reference to the other large family in the museum cracked me up. :) If I ever saw you in a museum, I would stare at you. But it would be with awe and delight and then I would run over and say Hi, I'm Emily! Can we be friends?
ReplyDeleteEmily,
ReplyDeleteLove your comment! Whenever people are clearly staring at us, and the girls notice, I always tell them it's because they're jealous of how wonderfully large and lovely our family is.
And the answer to such a greeting and question in the Met would be, "Of course!" followed by, "Would you like me to cut your children some matching bangs?" ;)