Where the Wild Things Are

Doh. Fell off the blogging wagon again. Maybe that's because while the wagon was being dragged along through the mud and the rain behind a couple of Clydesdales, I was out having a lovely foofy country French dinner with my Joshie (finally returned from Canada, yay!) at one of our favorite Marin restaurants: Left Bank. And by the time we got back, happy and stuffed to the gills, all we wanted to do was get naked and go to bed. So no blogging.

But anyway...today we took Eli out to the City to the Metreon to go see the Where the Wild Things Are interactive exhibit. There's a picture of me from my 31st birthday party, which was held at the Metreon back when the Wild Things exhibit was still pretty new, and I'm wearing Max's crown and holding a stuffed version of his scepter, sitting on the "tongue" of one of the huge monster faces that appears in the playground part of the exhibit. It's been stuck up on my dresser mirror for years, and Eli finally noticed it a few weeks ago. He was intrigued--one might almost say obsessed--with the picture, and made me explain it a bunch of times. We read the book together, I dragged out the crown and scepter, and he started asking to go there. Well today was finally the day.

We'd actually tried to take him last year, but the beginning part with the dark hallways and spooky monster noises freaked him out good. This time, he was still pretty freaked out the first time through and wanted Daddy to carry him and said he didn't like it--but then after that he just couldn't get enough and wanted to do it over and over and over (kind of like the haunted house experience at the Marin County Fair--I think when he finds something scary, and survives it, he wants to test himself against it again and again until he feels he has conquered it). We had brought the Max crown and scepter, and he wore/carried them all day. (We also bought him a Max-in-his-wolfsuit puppet, overly indulgent parents that we are.) He loved it so much that we literally had to drag him away kicking and screaming after a few hours to go have lunch (we were all feeling a bit low-blood sugar crazy by then, I suspect), and then go back again for an encore visit after lunch. The rest of the day he kept saying "I wish I could go to Where the Wild Things Are..." and we'd say "I know, it was fun, huh." And he'd say, wistfully: "yeah...I wanna go there."

I must say I found the exhibit still pretty fun, but starting to get run down--it was much grubbier than I remember it and a lot of the pieces had stopped working. I'd say it's time for a maintenance refresh. Still, overall it's really creative and fun, and a good place for kids (although I'd personally recommend it for kids between 4 and maybe 10 for best results). I took cute pix and may (or may not) post one here at some point. (Too lazy to go upload and process the pix from the camera right now...I'm really rather comfortably ensconced on the couch and am even debating trying to bash around a bit of the Augured after I stop fooling around with this entry. In fact maybe I should just quit doing this and go do that before I hit the too-tired-can't-be-creative point.)