The Think-ree
In December the Austin Children's Museum moved locations to the Mueller development near 51st street in Austin. They changed their name to The Thinkery. I think they should have changed their name to The Disease factory.
Just kidding. Anytime I think of a place with large amounts of children getting together, I can’t help but think of one of those commercials where a door handle is zoomed in on at a microscopic level and animated germs are having a party.
Because of this semi-germaphobic reaction, it took me a few months to agree to take the family to The Thinkery. We were actually given a family membership for Christmas so my wife had taken the boys before, but this was the first time I got to experience the “Think-ree,” as Eli calls it.
We went on a Saturday (a real bonehead move for someone who hates crowds) and as we entered the large, red box that is The Thinkery I could almost hear “Welcome to the Jungle” being played among the shouts and squeals of packs of children.
Eli immediately wanted to go play with the train set. I thought this was a waste of a trip since he has a mini train set at home. However, since one kid was pretty much hogging all the trains, he moved on.
He had my hand and started pulling me toward the stairs saying, “water, upstairs.” Sure enough they had a whole aquatic set up with all sorts of splishy splashy water toys to play with. About 6 seconds in some kid pulled some lever that did some thing that caused Eli to get splashed. And he lost it. I took him outside so he could calm down and I admit I kind of liked the break too. Of course, that was a little silly since we had been here for no more than 5 minutes.
We went back in but he was done with the water. We went over to the storytime area and he wanted to look at books. I was really glad we had been given a membership because I wasn’t feeling like this place was all that different than his bedroom and I didn't have the most positive feelings toward driving 20 minutes and paying $20 to go to his room.
After a little while he wanted to walk around some and made his way to the “dark room” downstairs. Now this he did get a kick out of. Inside the dark room there was an entire wall with holes you could put pegs in and those pegs were illuminated from behind (like a giant Lite-Brite). He stayed in there for a LONG time.
While my wife was with him talking to other parents, I took John and walked around avoiding talking to other parents. I noticed they had hand sanitizer dispensers mounted on the wall throughout the building. Seems like a great idea, however I never saw anyone but my family use them...
Eli checked out some other exhibits but didn’t really want to do anything else. My wife said when they’ve come and it’s not as busy he is more interested in other activities. I suppose not getting splashed in the face would make his visit more enjoyable. Also, most of these activities seem aimed at older kids.
It’s funny to me though, how often he asks to go to “the think-ree” even after getting splashed and overwhelmed by all the people. Maybe he's secretly very mature and challenging himself to adapt to an uncomfortable situation by going back to the Think-ree. Or maybe he just really wants to play with those trains.