False Modesty?

So Tessie and I were looking at photos together when we came across a few of her.

Tessie: Aww, cute!
Me: Don't say that about pictures of yourself, it's immodest.
Tessie: What does 'immodest' mean?
Me: To be immodest is to be too proud of yourself. It's like showing off.
Tessie: But I am proud of myself.
Me: You should be, but don't be too proud of yourself.
Tessie: I'm proud of myself but not too proud of myself. I'm perfect!

That backfired...

Theology by Tessie

It started with Tessie and me in the car talking about the weather...

Me: We're going to Legoland Friday. Hopefully the weather will be nice. [as compared to the deluge of almost Biblical proportions that was in progress]

T: Why hopefully?

Me: Well, all we can do is hope. We can't control the weather.

T: Why not?

Me: We just can't.

(pause)

T: God controls the weather.

(pause)

Me: Really, now? Tell me about God. Where does God live?

T: God lives in the sky, near the sun. God has a house near the sun made of dried raindrops. She has a spaceship attached to the house. God is a girl.

(further pause while I absorb this)

T: God made life. The first Mommy and Daddy. God created them.

--

As anyone who knows Tessie's Parents can guess, she's not learning this at home. And, I doubt she's learning it at the school that just hosted "Holiday Shows" rather than Christmas concerts. Fascinating.

Not what I expected to hear from the back seat

In the car on the way home from work today:

Tessie (iPhone in hand): Mommy, I don't like the maze game. It's too tricky so I got rid of it.

Me: Got rid of it? You mean you deleted it?

T: Yes. I deleted it.

Me: Um... how did you know how to delete it?

T: I just clicked on the "x."

Me: Tessie! Do NOT delete apps from Mommy's iPhone without asking.

T: Sorry, Mommy.

Me: That's ok, that was a free one anyway. But next time, ask before deleting anything.

T: Ok, Mommy.

[some moments later]

T: I really like moving things around. It makes a new dot each time I move something onto another screen.

Me: Please do not move my applications!

T: Ok.

[a little later]

T: I moved the calendar, is that ok?

Me: No!

T: Sorry, Mommy.

(I also had to learn the hard way to disable in-application purchases after Tessie spent $7 buying extra coins in TapZoo. Sigh. This kid knows my phone better than I do.)

Legoland! Day Two!

We did the math: it actually works out economically to purchase park memberships, so long as we plan on coming back again at least one more time within the next twelve months.

We do not anticipate any argument from Tessie about return visits.

Having thoroughly covered the park on the previous day, we went back to some of our favorite rides early. First up: the Miniland boat cruise. Dinosaurs, construction workers, African wildlife, Mount Rushmore, the New York skyline... you can see a lot from the boat.

Not only is there a Lego reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty in front of the reconstructed Manhattan skyline, there is also a Lego reconstruction of the reconstruction of the Statue of Liberty in front of the reconstructed Manhattan skyline in front of the New York New York Hotel in the reconstruction of Las Vegas.

Confused yet? There's also this model of Los Angeles' Griffith Observatory within view of San Francisco's TransAmerica Pyramid. They take a bit of license with the geography, but the models are excellent and, fortunately, there is adequate signage identifying the various landmarks.

Of course, some of the constructions are pure fantasy,

while others represent full-scale objects in remarkable detail.

This "Volvo" was parked outside the Volvo Driving School, which Tessie had visited on the previous day. We went back because she wanted another try at it. She ran into the same difficulties -- and walls -- as she had before, but still thought it was great fun.

Busy with the rides on the first day, we didn't take in any of the shows available in the park until our second day. First up was a singing, dancing, slapstick review about firefighters that Tessie enjoyed.

Tessie met Bob the Builder, the star of the next show, outside the theatre. He must be a very busy guy, with both his construction job and his position as Minister of Propaganda in the Obama cabinet*, but he still found the time to put together a 3D movie about building a roller coaster. Tessie sat through it, but found some of the 3D effects to be a little too much to take.

[*In case you don't get the joke, they use the same catch phrase: "Yes we can!"]

Right after the show, we discovered the "Build and Test" pavilion, and there went the rest of the afternoon. In "Build and Test," visitors get to assemble race cars from great buckets of Lego bricks and assorted components, then set them atop a ramp with a starting gate and race them against other cars.

 

After racing, Tessie decide to make some modifications. Some of those bricks were hard to reach:

Some were really hard to reach:

But Tessie was able to hang with the bigger kids, and put together a successful, if top-heavy, racer.

Before the park closed, we managed to extract Tessie from "Build and Test" in time to get her back on the Miniland cruise, the same ride on which we had begun our day. Not too long after closing time, they dimmed the lights and we got the signal to head for the exit after another full day.

But not before Tessie ran off to explore just a little more of Miniland...

x

Legoland!

Now that Tessie has turned four -- and, more importantly, has surpassed 40 inches in height -- we decided to make good on our earlier resolution to return to Legoland California.

Her height is important, because at 40 inches she has now met the minimum height requirement for all but two of the park's rides. (When she hits 48 inches, or 4'-0", she'll have the run of the park. Judging by her progress so far, that should be some time next week.)

Even for those who don't meet the rides' height requirements, Legoland is full of attractions and entertainment. The park's centerpiece is Miniland, a recreation in Lego of famous sites and cityscapes from around the world.

Many of the displays are animated, like this Presidential motorcade coming down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some are large-scale static displays of Lego craftsmanship; these are intended, I suspect, as much to demonstrate the artists' proficiency as to stimulate enormous purchases in the park's gift shop. (Where, alas, there is no "outlet pricing.")

Tessie loves Lego, as all kids do, but her real passion is the rides. Whether flying the "Cargo Ace" planes,

or sliding along on a magic carpet, Tessie loves the wind in her hair and the sensation of speed.

The park also offers a water play area, which is just the thing on a hot day.

The scale of the park, in terms of both its overall area and the individual rides it offers, seems to be a good fit for kids of Tessie's age up to about ten. The rides are all reasonably tame and designed to let the children control them.

There's no manufacturing on site, but there is a brief "factory tour" where it is possible to see Lego bricks being molded and packaged. Along the way, one can glean all sorts of statistics about Lego production, most of which can be reduced down to their essence: Lego is universal, ubiquitous and staggeringly popular.

The tour empties out into a small shop where Lego bricks can be purchased singly or in bulk, but at $7.99/4 oz., that can get pretty pricey. Still, if you need a lot of Lego minifigure heads...

One highlight of our day was Tessie's enrollment in the Volvo Driving School. (Volvo sponsors the attraction. Volvo is Swedish, while Lego is Danish. I guess it's a Scandinavian solidarity thing.)  Kids from three to five get to drive Lego cars around an oval track; when they finish, they get Drivers' Licenses. (There's a larger, more complex track for bigger kids.) Tessie may have had a bit of trouble negotiating the track, but the smile on her face let us know she didn't mind.

After a bit of playing in the Funtown section of the park,

(where Tessie surprised us by showing us she could slide down a fire pole by herself)

we decided to visit the new Sea Life Aquarium adjacent to the park. It's a small aquarium, but Tessie enjoyed it.

(On entering the park that morning, we submitted to a questionnaire about the aquarium; as a reward, Tessie got a stuffed lionfish. Here, she's introducing it to some real lionfish.)

Eventually, we were able to persuade her to leave. We had surprised her that morning by not telling her where we were going; we would surprise her the next day by going back!

The Swimsuit Edition

Tessie's been taking swimming lessons this summer, as she did last summer, at our local community pool. She's already successfully completed the "Tiny Tots" and "Advanced Tiny Tots" swim classes, and has matriculated through to "Kinder Kids." According to the brochure, in this class she'll learn how to do the "Front crawl with rhythmic side breathing, elementary backstroke, and backstroke with an introduction to diving." That seems a bit ambitious, doesn't it?

Classes are held in the afternoon for five days in a row, Monday to Friday. I had to pick up Tessie early from her pre-school to get her to class on time, and this caused a bit of excitement among her classmates, many of whom were eager to know what her afternoon plans were.

"I have swimming lessons," she informed them.

"Why?" one of them asked.

"Because I want to be a scuba diver," Tessie replied.

So we dashed home to change her into her swimsuit, then walked the short distance to the pool. We were a few minutes early, so Tessie sat by the edge of the pool and splashed around with some of the other early arrivals.

Once class began, Tessie followed the teacher's instructions to the best of her ability. She's still a little shaky on a number of the techniques, but she seemed to be enjoying herself. Even so, with all of them pushing and kicking as hard as they could, these kids just couldn't move the edge of the pool.

The instructor took each of the kids out one by one to paddle around the pool while hanging on to a kickboard. Here's Tessie's turn:

Before long, though, the enjoyment had dissipated, replaced by cold. Tessie began to get upset, explaining that she was "frozen" and wanted to come out of the pool. I tried to convince her to stay in just a bit longer, and move around to warm herself up, but she was insistent on coming out of the pool, so I acquiesced and she sat on my lap by the edge of the pool. Both the instructor and I tried to entice her back into the water, but she just shivered and refused.

"Tessie," I began, "don't you want to be a scuba diver? You have to learn how to swim if you want to be a scuba diver."

"It's too cold," she responded.

"Well, that's where the best diving is. All she shipwrecks with treasure and the biggest sea creatures are in the coldest water. If you want to be a scuba diver, you have to learn to swim in cold water."

"I don't want to be a scuba diver." Cross another career aspiration off the list. "I just want to be a baseball player."

"Well, if you become a baseball player, you'll only play one game a day. What will you do with all your free time? I think you could be a baseball player and a scuba diver. Don't you think that would be fun?"

"I think I'll just rest."

At that point the instructor came to the edge of the pool to ask if Tessie wanted to come back in to do "gliders," a technique where the kids put their hands together over their heads and glide through the water.

"Oh, Tessie, don't you want to try that?" I asked her. "It looks like lots of fun."

Resignedly, almost wistfully, she said, "Gliders. I used to do those."

She continued to just sit there on my lap while the other kids did their gliders. When that part of the lesson was done, the instructor once again tried to bring Tessie back into the fold. "Tessie, would you like to do jumpers?"

That got her interest. She's not as adept at flinging herself bodily into the pool as her older classmates, but she is still a daredevil at heart, so the opportunity to jump in at the deep[er] end of the pool was not to be missed. She bounded up out of my lap, much to my surprise, and took her place as the first in line to jump. Back into the water she went! (Regrettably, I couldn't back up fast enough to get a picture of the jump. Maybe next time.)

A

Big Fun in the Big Easy: part 4

Day 5

At last, the final chapter of our New Orleans adventures.

Having finally run out of Audubon Institute attractions, we had to find other ways to amuse ourselves for our last two days in the city. Fortunately, this was not difficult.

One of my priorities for this trip was a visit to the National World War II Museum, formerly the National D-Day Museum, so while Tessie and her mother slept in, I made the short walk from our hotel.  

Why New Orleans, I expect you may be asking. True, no battles were fought there, but the museum, whose founders included the historian Stephen Ambrose, chose the site to honor the contribution of New Orleans boat builder Andrew Jackson Higgins and his shallow-draft, plywood Higgins boats. These were the boats that carried the first assault waves to the Normandy coast on D-Day. "Andrew Higgins," General Eisenhower said, "is the man who won the war for us." So New Orleans is indeed a fitting home for this museum.

The museum still shows that it began with a more focused collection of artifacts and displays specific to D-Day, and the museum itself seems to be sorting itself out of an identity crisis brought on by its name change and scope change. D-Day is extensively covered, but the air war, the North African and Italian campaigns, and the battle of the Atlantic are all given far less space than they deserve. (One can forgive the omission of the Russian front, the Battle of Britain, Manchurian campaign, etc., in a primarily American museum.) The Pacific Theatre, from Pearl Harbor to the atomic bombings of Japan, is given an extensive, highly detailed and modern gallery full of interactive displays, maps and artifacts. The museum is undergoing significant expansion, which is scheduled to be completed by 2014; hopefully the increased gallery space will allow the curators to flesh out the weaker displays. If all are brought up to the standard of the Pacific gallery, this will be an outstanding museum.

After entering the museum via a large atrium in which a variety of military vehicles and aircraft are displayed, one ascends to the second floor to begin a sequential journey through history, beginning with a gallery titled "Prelude to War." This display (above) shows the relative forces of the three countries shown at the end of the 1930s. Each figurine represents 20,000 soldiers, sailor or airmen in each countries' military. Shown this way, it makes the susequent military build-up by the United States that much more impressive, but the museum missed the opportunity to bookend that display with a corresponding one illustrating conditions at the end of the war.

Following the initial stage-setting galleries, and the standard war-museum fare of weapons displays...

...and -- what's this! -- an Enigma machine, which the Germans used to encode secret messages, and the Allies used to read them...

...the museum jumps abruptly to planning for D-Day, followed, obviously, by the execution of those plans. It was during these spectacularly detailed and absorbing exhibits that Tessie (and Mommy) caught up to me.

Tessie does not like war, nor does she like war museums. The somber lighting, the piped-in sound effects, photographs that are alternately cringe-inducing and heart rending; all these things made for one unhappy little girl. As much as I want her to grow up to appreciate the horrible nature of war, this was not the time. So, Tessie and her mother hung out in the bookstore while I rushed through the Pacific gallery. (Sometimes I get away with murder.)

We had lunch at the American Sector, the museum's cafe, which was named not for the partition of post-war Berlin but for the area of New Orleans in which it is located. New Orleans is such an eclectic city of numerous foreign influences that it may be the only American city with such a sector. The cafe's menu offers 1940s-era comfort food crafted by a retired Marine Corps chef. (No, really -- they actually brag about that.) It's tasty fare, but a far cry from the city's more renowned restaurants in both style and substance.

After lunch, the ladies decided the museum and I were a lost cause, so they headed back to the hotel pool while I returned to the museum. Disappointed as I was by its seemingly limited scope, I certainly did find plenty with which to occupy myself. Perhaps in 2014, when their expansion is complete, we'll return for more than just one day of visiting.

Day 6

By the morning of our last day in the Crescent City, jet lag was no longer much of an issue and I was able to wake up in time to take some sunrise pictures from our hotel window.

With an afternoon flight ahead of us, we needed to find some activity that would wear Tessie out enough that she could sleep soundly on the plane. We saved our visit to the Louisiana Children's Museum for our last day for just that purpose.

With so many activities for her to explore, we had a hard time just keeping up. There was the Community Helper exhibit... 

... some animal x-rays...

...and a culinary exhibit with some local flavor.

There was also an art room, where Tessie was provided with paints and a smock, and set to creating her masterpiece.

While it dried, there was time for more play. Tessie just loves anything with balls rolling down ramps...

...and dress-up is always a favorite, too.

The museum had a pretend restaurant, where Tessie served us all "lunch." There was also a pretend supermarket so realistic it was being used for training.

She also got to create a giant soap bubble around herself.

There was also a large gallery devoted to urban planning and engineering. Hopefully she wasn't developing any career ideas here...

 The museum had plenty of attractions to captivate a small child, and we, of course, were captivated by Tessie's enthusiasm, but soon enough it was time to grab a bite at Mulate's Cajun restaurant.We couldn't convince her to try the grilled alligator. (It was delicious, if a bit tough.)

From there we walked back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. Tessie did indeed sleep on the plane.