As we were driving back from the store, Annalie piped up from the back seat, “Gramaw, wanna hear a joke?”

“Sure!” My mom said. I rolled my eyes, fully expecting the joke to have something to do with poop, as almost all of Annalie’s jokes do.

“Why did the poop cross the road?”

“Uh, I don’t know. Why?”

“So it could get to the other side and get poop all over everything!” Annalie cackled merrily at her own joke. My mom and I laughed at her laughing; it really was funny. “Wanna hear another one, Gramaw?”

“Sure,” my mom said. “But can it be a little less gross this time?”

“Okay. But this joke has poop in it,” Annalie solemnly informed her.

“Can you tell it without the poop?” my mom asked.

“I don’t think I can!”

This morning we met my cousin and her two older kids at the Children’s Museum! I had not been there in years, since before Annalie was born. It was a bit of a trip down memory lane for me, because I worked there the summer after high school. I had always wanted to work at the Children’s Museum and when I finally did get to work there…I hated it. The staff was very clique-ish. Even though many of them were nice, because I was the new girl I constantly got the boring jobs and scut work. I could understand to some extent, paying my dues and all that. But the thing that really bugged me was that we weren’t supposed to interact with the kids! All we were supposed to do was clean up after them and answer questions. That’s not what I thought working at the Children’s Museum would be like. Needless to say I didn’t last there past that one summer.

Of course, this isn’t the same museum it was when I worked there 15 years ago. When I was there, it had just moved into this building and they were still sorta filling the place up with exhibits. It was rather empty back then, actually. And now, it’s full of so many cool things to look at and play with. We didn’t even get to see one-tenth of the museum.

I forgot to ask their mom for permission to put her kids’ photos on the internet. This is my solution.

That is partly because Annalie’s second cousins are a bit younger than her. They won’t be 3 years old till January (they’re twins), and 3-year-olds lose interest much quicker than a 4-year-old does. It’s amazing how fast I forget what a certain age is like once Annalie is past it. Watching the twins today helped me realize how much Annalie has changed in the last year. Life has gotten easier in so many ways. True, 4-year-olds can be challenging at times, but mostly 4 is much easier and smoother than 3.

Because my cousin’s family has a museum membership, she was able to get us in for free, and we got to see the DinO!saur exhibit upstairs for free too. It was pretty cool, with life-size models of various dinos that moved! The kids especially had fun with one model that was only bare metal and joints and gears, set up without the rubber skin. It had a panel of buttons labeled according to what body part they’d move, and you could push the buttons and see how it worked. I thought that was brilliant, showing the man behind the curtain, so to speak. I bet it really helps a lot of kids lose their fear of the moving dinos when they see how it’s done. I know it would have helped me, when I was a kid. You better believe I would have been scared of those suckers when I was Annalie’s age. She wasn’t though! She ran right up to them and oohed and aahed.

The face-painting station was always my favorite when was a kid. I made sure we did that today before we left. Because the best part of going to the Children’s Museum is getting to walk around the rest of the day with a flower and a heart painted on your face.

Oh, how I miss fall here. Even though it’s mid-November, many of the trees still have leaves and those leaves are a riot of autumn colors. But there are also plenty of leaves on the ground, ready to be crunched.