Bioluminescence!

Diggory and I set forth on our inaugural Museum+Momma outing the afternoon of this past Thursday, Januray 5th. I decided we should hit up one of the obvious choices, the National Museum of Natural History. Dinosaurs, whales, sparkly gemstones, butterflies, and honey bees. What could be more entertaining?! We got a bit of a late start, arriving at the museum just after 2pm. I still sometimes find it difficult to get out of the house before noon. Diggory eats lunch around 12:30-1pm, and it sometimes takes the little fella almost 45 minutes to actually get all the food in his mouth. He's trying though. (And Momma's trying to not only feed him Muenster cheese. It was my favorite as a child too, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.)

I digress...


For momma's with babies, don't forget to enter the museum through the Constitution Avenue (North) side. That's where you'll find the ramp, unless you really want to carry your stroller up the stairs on the Madison Avenue (South) side and have a Rocky-inspired moment when you reach the summit. There are bathrooms just past the security post (and the handicapped stalls are big enought for strollers.) Also, I should mention, that we parked at Daddy's office in Rosslyn and took the metro to the Federal Triangle station (Blue/Orange). I've found that taking the metro, even with a baby/stroller, is way less stressful than trying to find parking downtown. Just my opinion.



First, we made our way to the Rotunda to see the big elephant. Diggory was more entertained by the echoes his own happy squealing made, but that's okay. We asked a very nice tourist to take our picture. And we returned the favor. Then we headed into Mammals Hall. Very cool, and great for kids. Taxidermy animals probably make more sense to little kids than skeletons. (Further along in our visit, Diggory was totally unimpressed by the dinosaur skeletons.) We saw a young gentleman sketching (very well, I might add) in the exhibit of African mammals. I love watching people sketch in museums, though I try not to stare at their work. I wouldn't want someone watching me! Diggory seemed fairly taken by the hippopotamus, so I took his picture. There are a few skeleton reproductions in relief at stroller height in the back of the mammals exhibits, which Diggory seemed to enjoy touching. I was trying to keep my eye out for things he could reach out and feel since he's still too young for the Discovery Room.

We traveled pretty quickly through the Human Origins galleries and found ourselves in the back of the Ocean Hall. The special exhibitions gallery currently displays The Bright Beneath: The Luminous Art of Shih Chieh Huang. It was AMAZING! Sadly, the exhibition ends tomorrow, January 8th, and I'm so glad we stumbed upon it before its closed. Huang was a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow in 2007 and studied deep-ocean species in the collections of the museum. He was inspired by an adaptation called bioluminescence, which allows sea creatures to produce light. The gallery is almost completely dark and filled with motorized creatures made from computer parts, wire, plastic tubing, and color-changing lights, some on the floor, some suspended from the ceiling. Diggory was totally enthralled, as was everyone else I saw in the gallery. One of the most intriguing parts of the exhibition, especially for someone who has done my fair share of exhibition isntallation, was a time lapse video of how the exhibition was put together. You can watch the video online here.

The Bright Beneath was certainly the highlight of our visit, but we carried on to see what other treasures lay ahead. We wheeled through the rest of the Ocean Hall (Diggory liked the fish tanks) and buzzed back through the Rotunda and into the Dinosaurs galleries. I totally thought Diggory would love it, but he didn't. Maybe I need to give him a few years. Momma eavesdropped on a conversation outside the FossiLab. Yes, I like to know what the scientists are brushing off tiny fossils. It was pretty quiet in this section of the gallery, actually, and there are benches. Maybe not ideal for breastfeeding, but we stopped for a quick rest and some practice with our straw spout sippy cup.


After our short break, we took the elevator in the Rotunda up to the second floor. We popped in to see the Hope Diamond in its new, temporary setting "Embracing Hope," before entering the rest of the Gems and Minerals galleries. For moms with little kids, there's a whole display case of various gems and minerals arranged by color. Very didactic. Diggory thought the giant crystals were pretty cool too.


After Momma teared up watching rescue footage in the special exhibition Against All Odds: Resuce at the Chilean Mine, we sweep through another special exhibition, Race: Are We So Different?, which also closes tomorrow. The Korea Gallery on the north side of the second floor is quite beautiful, and very quiet. There are a few benches, so perhaps a good place for breastfeeding moms. Then we went through the Bones galleries. There were a lot of bones. Diggory didn't get it, and I wasn't terribly into it either (but maybe it was the four hours of sleep I got the previous night.) We took a spin through the exhibition Written in Bone next. Some of my colleauges from graduate school worked on this exhibit, and I had never been through it before. Fair warning to hormonal mommas, though. There are some reproduction and authentic skeletons of fetuses, babies, and young mothers, which you may find disturbing. I did.


On a lighter note, our next stop was the Insect Zoo. Maybe this time next year, when Diggory is almost two years old, he'll be more inetersted in small display cases of creepy crawlies. He just now understands that when I point my finger at something, I'm actually pointing my finger at something I want him to look at. He loved the honey bees though! Probably because I could roll the stroller right up to the hive and the clear plastic tube that exits out the window into the outside world of Washington, DC. Where do those bees get their pollen in January?


We didn't buy tickets for the live butterfly exhibit, mainly because you can't take strollers into the dome. Maybe we'll do that when either Momma or Daddy (or Grandma or Nanna or Grappy) can babysit the stroller, diaper bag, coats, purse, etc.

And then, all of a sudden, we had covered the whole museum! Wow!


We took the elevator all the way down to the ground floor and stopped at the coffee bar outside the Atrium Cafe (which was closed) for a quick snack before heading to the metro. I was so worried that we'd hit rush hour on the train, and I didn't want to be one of those moms trying to squeeze our stroller onto an already sardine-packed rail car. Luckily, and to my surprise, the metro wasn't all that crowded for 4:30pm on a Thursday, and we met a very nice grandma-type lady who kept Diggory entertained all the way back to Rosslyn. Diggory did NOT fall asleep in the car on the way home, as I was hoping he would, and he missed his afternoon nap. What he gained instead was his very first trip to the National Museum of Natural History and maybe some dreams of bioluminescent, robotic deep-ocean creatures.