Aquarium Trip

We went to the Seattle Aquarium last week and it was a huge hit! Sam enjoyed the fishtank at the Children's Museum (also awesome), but when he saw the full wall of fish at the Aquarium entrance, he was absolutely entranced. "Fishies! Fishies! FISHIES!" For awhile I was afraid we wouldn't get any farther into the exhibits, because he was about ready to camp out all day. Every few minutes he'd run back and drag me to the glass, just to be sure I wasn't missing anything ^_^ He kept trying to count the fish, but his grasp of counting isn't quite ready for anything that wiggly.

My pictures didn't turn out so great, boo!

Eventually I lured him away with the promise of more fishies, and we found the tide pool/shoreline exhibit. This tank had a wave generator and every 15 sec or so a big wave would go through. The waves surprised him, every time one went by he would yell "hey!" I hope it didn't bother any of the other guests; I thought it was hilarious.


Then we moved on to the hands-on pools, where you could touch starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins and I don't even know what else. Sam was mostly interested in the water ("splash splash!"). We didn't hang around too long, but I did find a star fish for him to touch. Dunno how impressed he was though, since it neither glittered nor wiggled.

He also really liked the jellyfish exhibit, but just like the hands-on pools, I suspect he found the media more interesting than the inhabitants. It was a big transparent ring with jellyfish rotating through and a color-changing backlight on one end. He plastered himself to the light and informed me of all the color changes.



We wandered around for a bit after that but were starting to run out of steam. Sam liked the otters, especially once I pointed out that they were kind of like our puppies if Millie could swim. Hopefully that doesn't lead to confusion down the line.

The problem with going to the Seattle Aquarium via public transportation is that our bus dropped us off waaay up on Pike Place (in front of the Market) and we had to trek down a looong stairway to get to the aquarium. It was doable first thing in the morning and going down, but I wasn't about to attempt it going back up afterwards. That meant a long, roundabout bus ride with a (level) walk to catch our original bus back home. And guess what happened on the first bus?

Yeah, sleepy baby did not wake up through several blocks of being juggled through the city, onto bus #2 and all the way back to the apartment. He's a heavy boy! 'Course, it's his mommy's fault for not leaving sooner or bringing a stroller, but wheeew it made for a long haul back. Totally worth it to see him at the aquarium though!