What a Fun Saturday!

Saturday was a lot of fun. Uncle Stevie came to visit on Friday and was interested in the Newport Aquarium, so off we went on Saturday. We drove during Aidan's naptime so that he'd be well rested when we got there. He seemed to know where we were, we have annual passes so he's certainly been there before. As early as the parking garage he started talking about the fish.
We hung out around the mall and courtyard area until the aquarium allowed strollers at 4:30. We got candy from the candy machine, shopped a little, and checked out all the street performers. There was a guy in a suit and hat that had painted himself blue from head to toe. Aidan was fascinated with him and a little scared, although later in the day after dinner he asked to see the "Blue Man" again. The blue man had already taken off by that point. Aidan talked about him for the rest of the night and even this morning. The guy made some impression. Other performers were the balloon animal guy, the girl on stilts, and the snake handler. Aidan enjoyed petting the snake. We also enjoyed looking at the crabs and iguanas being sold in the courtyard. It was a good way to kill time.

Unfortunately, there were lots of other families doing the same thing, so the aquarium was terribly crowded with people and strollers after 4:30. Maybe next time we'll just check the stroller at the door. He had a lot of fun at the aquarium. We only had 3 meltdowns. Funny, we didn't see any other kids lying on the floor kicking their feet and screaming. Interestingly, once he got it all out he was able to move on to the next thing with little leftover emotion. Jason said that he thinks Aidan was much more interested in a lot of the exhibits in ways that he hasn't been before. I think Aidan's attention span is getting longer, so it figures that he'd be able to focus more on the animals. I'm looking forward to the winter months when the aquarium isn't quite as packed as it is now. The big bummer is that the penguins weren't doing much at all and the lights were out in their tank. They must have been overstimulated too!

After the aquarium we went to dinner at a restaurant that we'd first encountered in The Woodlands. We learned that Brio has 4 levels of menu/price combinations. The level in Newport is a bit lower than the one in The Woodlands, we found this pretty fascinating.

Aidan didn't do so well at dinner and wanted to see the "Blue Man." That's when we learned that the guy was gone. There was this "Eurobungee" jumper set up and we could see it from the restaurant patio. We went over to see it and watched several kids do it. It was just a trampoline type thing with bungee straps so that the kids could jump way up in the air, do flips, etc. When Jason and Stevie caught up to us they told me that the sign said that children must be 20 lbs. Aidan had been saying, "My turn!" everytime a kid got off of the thing. We talked about it, evaluated the safety, watched other small kids do it, and decided to let him do it if he wanted to. He had such a great time on it! He couldn't really jump the way the bigger kids did, but the operator and Jason both pulled on his straps to make him go pretty high. His face was void of emotion throughout, making me think he may not like it. We determined later that he must have been overwhelmed with excitement because he cried when we took him off of it. I sent out the video via email, so if you didn't get it and would like to see it, let me know.

We had a pretty good crowd of people watching as we put him on the thing. Several mothers were visibly outraged that we'd put a 2 year old on it. We didn't care. The thing was perfectly safe and we were right there with him. If he had decided he was scared, we would have taken him off. If it looked unsafe, we would have taken him off. I'm glad we let him do it, he had such a great time! The kid is a little dare devil!