July 8, 2005 - Friday
We spent today at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center. It's a place we've taken the boys both (first & second) other times they've been to Pittsbrugh and it's alwasy big hit. You can't go wrong with the ball area, the very large, miniature train room , the water table (left), and the discovering waves area (on right is a wave table that seemed to facinate Harry). And the boys did all that stuff and more. This time, however, there were two new attractions that were pretty cool, at least I thought they were cool even if the boys were probably a little overwhelmed..

First, the USS Requin submarine is moored there and open for visitors. Oddly, Harry seemed mildly uncomfortable walking through, I'm guessing because he was thinking about it being under the water but I don't really know (it could have been that he was just remembering the ball area and wanted to go there instead). He didn't make a big deal out of it so it couldn't have been too bad. Jeremy was more concerned with just getting through the doorways.

There was also a whole new building at the Science Museum called the SportsWorks center. It was all about doing, too, with interactive areas where kids can actually try rock climbing, bungy swinging, pitching against a radar gun, and, as pictured, running against [a video of] Jackie Joyner Kersee. There were several others, too: mini golf (with odd science-oriented holes), hockey, a bobsled simulation, basketball, etc., although most of them were desgined for somewhat older children. Harry, (right) did the run, but got upset that the three other kids were much faster and he stopped half way out of some kind of embarrassment. I tried to tell him that they were much bigger kids and that maybe he should run against Jeremy, but sadly, he had been discouraged. (I guess I need to work on that with him.) I thought the running display was pretty nice. Harry did want to pitch in the cage, but it was much too far. Thankfully, they had a little kids area off to the side with a radar gun. Harry hit 24 MPH on a couple of occasions.

Harry had an interesting approach to the balance beam. Mommy tried to get them to do it right, but it was a losing battle.


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