Michigan

     This has been a very busy week. Our trip to Michigan went really well. No tantrums at any airport components and a good mood in general on Matilda's part. It was amazing to see Matilda blossom this trip. She was talking to EVERYONE. From the flight attendants to the bell hop, Mat is making friends everywhere she goes. I've found that if I introduce her to someone, she'll do her shy giggle, but if she meets them on her own accord, she'll chat their ear off.

Handing over our bags to the airline. Of course Matilda gets to keep her own. B and I try to keep the handle short so it's easy to maneuver but Mat always immediately extends the handle. At least we try.

First night in Michigan. Mat was excited that she peed in the potty. She was running around with the (emptied) potty!

Well, at least one of us was excited about the snow. She loves doing "footprints" in the snow. I much rather prefer the footprints that we did by our hotel pool in La Jolla, CA.

Soo excited about the snow!

Matilda kept asking to wash her hands because the sink was just her size!

In lieu of all the hand-washing, and additional sanitizing on my part, Mat still managed to grab a cold during this trip and has since passed it on to me. Gotta love it.

We were using base-2 encoding to send "e-mails" to china. Different combinations of black and while ping-pong balls represented different letters of the alphabet. Once the row was full, you closed the chute and the balls were then sucked through the tube and sent twisting and turning through a bunch of clear tubes. We sat here for a good 10 minutes and would have sat longer had other kids not come along and asked to do it.

The grocery store did NOT AT ALL compare to the one at the Please Touch Museum, but Matilda still enjoyed having some fake food to play with.

Magnet tiles! J would be proud!

The lighted table gave the magnet tiles a really cool effect, however, Mat only played with them for approximately 15 seconds.

The water feature was great because it had step-stools for the toddlers to stand on. This way she was able to reach all three tiers of the water table!

There was a DELICIOUS ORGANIC pizzeria right in downtown Ann Arbor. We ate lunch there both days. Soo good! They even have their own basil plant wall with halogen lights. Fresh basil on every pizza (which Mat picked off of course).

I didn't give her much time to wake up after nap before carting her off to the Natural History Museum. She was a bit overwhelmed, but there was nobody else there so that was great.

There were several aerial and abyssal fossils hanging from the ceiling. Those freaked me out.

This fossil is awesome! I didn't realize that the Sabertooth tiger is apparently native to southern California!

Mastodon and Mammoth fossils!

Super cute!

Very excited to be eating a Bruegger's Bagel sandwich!

She ate half of it!

I was having her run up and down the hallway to try and tire her out. Can't say it helped much. She still took awhile to fall asleep and slept her normal hour and a half.

Excited to select books to read at the Ann Arbor downtown library

The story-time leaders gave her two stamps. A star on her left hand and a chick on her right hand.

I was thrilled that she was soo excited to be at storytime at a new library. She was not anywhere near this excited when we visited a children's storytime while in Santa Monica, CA.

HALF of the children's section!

This is the area reserved for story time. This space alone is bigger than the children's section at our local Philadelphia Library.

 After nap I asked Mat if she wanted to go see dinosaurs or go to the library. She wanted to go back to the library! Here she is doing puzzles.

The bellhop wasn't sure how to handle her bundle of energy. She was chatting his ear off!

Playing with Momma and Daddy while waiting for our ride to the airport.