Day Three -- Bloomington, Bugs and Bowels

Hurrah for fabulous friends!  Our one night in Bloomington was spent with some of my favorite people.  We enjoyed good food, good company (Pippa and Merry had a blast with the younger family members while I was blessed to enjoy grown-up conversation time) and, after a rough start, a great night's sleep. Thank you, thank you to the wonderful Jackson family for all their hospitality!

J hoped that while we were in Bloomington that I would take the kids to WonderLab, a children's science museum where J volunteered while at IU.  Some of my favorite memories of dating J are connected to WonderLab.  One Saturday,  just as our friendship was turning into something more serious, J asked me out on a secret date -- it turned out that he had scheduled us to work at WonderLab's annual 'BubbleFest'.  We spent the day together helping kids (and a few adults) play with bubbles of every shape and size and I think it was there in the bubbles that I first really fell in love.  Later J took me to the museum to introduce me to his favorite hissing cockroaches. He got someone to get one out for us so I could hold it, put his own hand beneath mine and gently kept me from squishing the hideous creature -- who would imagine that I would ever have a fond memory that involved a cockroach?  And now our children have had the chance to squirm away and refuse to look at the relatives of that very bug that played a role in their parent's courtship . . .

Rose (a long way) in front of cockroaches.

Our visit to WonderLab was fantastic.  The kids enjoyed playing with the bubbles, in the water course, with various building blocks, and, even though they would not even get close to the cockroaches, both kids got to pet a snake.  Unfortunately things ended in a bit of a screaming and crying crisis.  I spent a month preparing for this trip and I thought I was prepared for everything.  I was a bit worried about traveling with a newly-trained potty goer and went so far as to buy a travel potty for our car, but somehow I neglected to think about what would happen when young bowels met up with hours in the car, strange locations and travel food.  What happens, apparently, is not much.  Merry went just three days without a movement, but for Merry, who has had problems with elimination since he was an infant, even one day is too long.  When things finally started moving we were, thankfully, on the last exhibit, but even so, carrying your screaming child out of a museum is never fun.  (As an aside, Pippa had problems too and went 6 days without a movement . . . next time we're starting fiber gummies before we leave!)

And so, on that happy note, our Bloomington time was over.  Both kids left the museum grumpy, Merry for obvious reasons and Pippa because Merry's bowel movement ended our visit rather abruptly.  I was planning on visiting at least one of Bloomington's fabulous restaurants before we left, but there was no way I was dragging two grumpy (and tired) kids with me, so we dropped by Taco Bell on the way out of town, got gas at the gas station around the corner from the house where J and I lived for the first three months of our married life, and drove off into the sunset . . .

Next stop St. Louis . . .