The Salvateenies: Bay Area Discovery Museum

Today we took the kids to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito.

Check out that view

But the real highlight of the day was that Caroline greeted LeeAnn at the door with squeals of "Auntie!"

The impetus for our visit was the big Clifford exhibit - though it features Clifford in his famous "Big Red Dog" days on Bridwell Island, not his puppyhood on Manhattan, which is what the Teenies are more familiar with.

Daniel and Caroline chat with Emily Elizabeth

Obviously Caroline and EE have a little more to chat about

Max visited Mac (with whom he's always being confused by autocorrect on Mommy's iPhone)

And you can't snub Mr. and Mrs. Howard

Then it was time to play in T-Bone's sandbox

Caroline is a budding percussionist

There was a day camp that preceded us into each room and there were just too many people in some of the rooms at time. Despite growing up and spending each day needing to "share" and "take turns", they had to be reminded not to snatch things away from the other kids and that it was ok if other kids played with "their" toys. Joe was interested to watch as they decided to gang up on a kid who either took a toy from or closed a door on one of them (I don't remember which), but he did intervene before the other parents got upset. Interestingly, the other parents were not as congenial as they have been at playgrounds. Maybe because we had three adults and three kids and they didn't immediately see them as a group? Or maybe they were just too busy worrying about where their kids were running off to and what they were getting into. Who knows.

Next it was off to the Bay Room to explore the train table and the rocking ship (which both "rocks!" and actually, physically, rocks). It's a mini model of the wharf and quite cute. The day camp got here before us to this room, too, and Max had a first class meltdown when someone took a wooden train that was sitting near him. He sobbed and screamed at the train table, in my arms across the room, up the stairs, and onto the boat, then back down the stairs and over to the Port of Oakland. There, he calmed down and set about building and moving blocks with a little girl. Oakland. I should've thought to take our little A's fan there to start with!

(Auntie actually climbed through the whole under-pier tunnel with Caroline - kudos Auntie)

She was inspecting the crabs to see if they were up to snuff

He loaded all those containers onto the crane!

We stopped into the Wave Room, but the kids were a little too short to truly partake of the wave table and a bunch of the other exhibits were "out of order". In fact, Max never even made it in the room, preferring to stay outside with Daddy chasing birds and playing with sidewalk chalk. Honestly, I think the kids' favorite part of the whole experience was that it was a huge expanse where they were allowed to just run.

Our last stop was at a little area designed for "tots" - no kids over 42". We measured Daniel, and he came in at just 33", so we were good. There was a meandering creek that was just at toddler height and the kids got to play putting plastic fish, frogs, and of course, their hands in the water.