Adventures with small children

I celebrated the day after Thanksgiving by accompanying my 18 month old nephew on his first real transit adventure. We started bright and early with a train. He loves trains. I am not so sure once we got on the train that he knew that's where we were, but we enjoyed listening for the whistle and watching it pull up.

Oh! Wow! He is fond of saying when he sees something he really likes.



We probably should have taken a shorter train ride because sitting in the seat and looking out the window only happened in five to ten minute spurts. We could capture his attention with the animals and the water... AGUA he yells everytime he sees it. But then he wanted to run up and down the train and talk to all the people. Good thing he's cute.

When we pulled into Union Station, I offered to take care of him while my sister and brother-in-law used the facilities. As soon as we could, I took him to my favorite place at Union Station. There on the side is a little garden with a fountain, beautiful benches and trees. It is a quiet oasis next to the bustling station. The first time I ever saw it, it was full of people in period costumes waiting to get on the mystery train (Sherlock Holmes era I suspected). It was a beautiful and mysterious place where you could really feel transported back in time. Everytime I am in Union Station, I think I can see and hear the soldiers moving around during WWII.

Well mijo loved the garden, but mostly that he could run around and, of course, the fountain. He ran up to it exclaiming, "AGUA!" and proceeded to get as close as possible without climbing in. Just mesmerized to watch the water go up and come down.

He probably could have stayed at the station all day, there was another fountain on the other side, not as fascinating to me as it is more modern, but enchanting to him because it was full of fish.

We headed over to Olvera Street for breakfast -- it was a difficult half an hour because mijo really wanted to run and Olvera Street is not really for running. I managed to keep him busy while his mom and dad ate, but he wasn't really having the stroller.

Next we went back to Union Station to get the Red Line of the Metro. I had foolishly envisioned walking off all the turkey feast once we got out of the metro, but my brother-in-law's knee wasn't up to the trek, so we caught a bus. The only thing mijo loves more than AGUA is the bus. It was dicey at the end because it was morning nap time... but we made it.

The La Brea Tar Pits is a great place to take young children (all children really) because it is mostly a park with a small museum. The grounds have tar pits still bubbling. My brother-in-law could not believe that the bubbles could hold us spellbound, but they did. Like clock work, old faithful my sister thought, a small eruption that turned into a thin bubble shimmering in the sunlight and then POP. A few seconds later, it started all over again.



We looked at the tar pits and thought about going into the museum, but then mijo spied another of his favorite things, a ball. A soccer ball to be exact. I tried to tell him that he couldn't just grab someone else's soccer ball, but the little boy who owned it, kicked it right over to mijo. Mijo is not a kicker, he's a thrower. The little boy's grandma was telling him to let the baby play with the ball, in Spanish, and Mijo was trying to throw the ball at her.

Eventually he got bored with the ball and ran up the hill. That's the thing when you are a kid in a candy store, you just don't know where to go next. The steep hill leads to the cieling of the tarpits museum...you look down into the center garden of the museum. Mijo wanted to jump into the garden, so we figured we better go inside.

My sister has been teaching mijo how to say the sounds of the animals; so far he has cow, dog, cat, LION or TIGER, snake and fish. I know, I know, fish don't really make noise, but mijo makes the cutest fish lips ever when you ask him what does the fish do? So we went inside and every time mijo saw the Saber Toothed Tiger, he roared.

Pretending to be fearless as usual, he ran from exhibit to exhibit until we met up with the museum lady. She had some re-creations of the fossils they have found, specifically she had the heads of several prehistoric tigers and wolves as well as one big tooth. Mijo loved the tooth and hit the floor with it. But when the lady brought out the tiger head with the moving jaw, he jumped back.

Eventually we ended up in the garden. Mijo was getting more and more tired, you could tell, especially when he went up to a little girl his size and hit her. He likes little girls, and big ones too, for that matter. Usually he turns on the charm and says "HI," in his cute fast way. But his crabbiness was showing when he hit the little girl, no smile, no "hi", just pow.

After a challenging time in the museum store, we finally went outside again to drink some AGUA and run around some more. While my sister talked to the fiddle player and mijo tried to grab all the money in the fiddler's box, I was watching two young boys roll down the hill mijo had run up.

Not many people know this, but I am an expert at hill rolling. Over the years, I have perfected the technique and feel it is my duty to help fledgeling rollers to become experts. When mijo noticed the boys rolling, he ran right over to them; actually into their path. This gave me the opportunity to impart some lessons. I showed them the hand tucking and feet together tricks. But, of course, you can't really teach kids to roll properly unless you actually SHOW them. So I went to the top of the hill, took off my hair clip, and showed them how to do it. Afterall, you don't become an expert hill roller by allowing prime opportunities to roll slip by.

After the hill, mijo had a little lunch and then was ready to start running again. We explored the rest of the park, and when my sister and brother-in-law needed a little break, I ran after the mijo. We went everywhere and fast. He tried to take someone's soda, almost crashed a romantic picnic, and tried to climb on the giant concrete sloth. There was a little playing in the dirt. There were some attempts to pick flowers and climb trees, and there was an awful lot of running. Eventually it was time to head back to Union Station.

We left the park and got on the bus... this time mijo really understood that we were ON THE BUS. He kept telling the lady sitting beside us, just in case she hadn't noticed, "BUS!" We looked out the window, said hi to everyone we could, and then, he turned around, sat down on my lap, and finally fell asleep. Smooth sailing after that for about an hour... he slept right through the metro and our drinks and nachos on Olvera Street.

But he woke up again when we got on the train, perhaps a little bit too early... the ride back on the train was more trouble than the ride there. A very grouchy and still tired little one who wanted to run up and down with three adults with no energy left to chase.

Believe it or not, after that wild adventure, we went to a wedding reception where I had the pleasure to run after mijo for another hour.

It was great fun, and I am pretty sure I worked off all the turkey as well as the nachos and the taquitos and the sangria. And it was great to be part of his first transit adventure.