Looking After Cian: Day 3

A Visit to MOSI

Today Cian and I visited MOSI, Tampa's Museum of Science and Industry, directly across Fowler Avenue from USF.

I parked in a campus parking lot, for which I have a permit, and we took the bridge over Fowler Avenue to MOSI.  I have driven under this bridge numerous times, but this was the first time I had ever walked over it.

The obligatory dinosaur skeleton, in the lobby.

 Cian was impressed by this replica of the world's largest hailstone.

Are we having fun yet? 

 Looks like a mixture of terror and delight.  (This is not Cian.)

Cian's head on a platter.

 He liked these gears.  You can move them around to engage them in various ways.

The rope walk.  He was not able to go on the rope walk because they require closed toe shoes and he was wearing sandals.  We learned that at the entrance to MOSI, and he didn't seem to mind.

 The bouncy room.  (Moonwalk?)  He really liked this.  I am taking the picture through a nylon screen.

 Emerging from the Obstacle Course.

 In the cockpit of a Boeing 747.  The instrument panels are real.  He must have spent 10 to 15 minutes in this exhibit.

Looking After Cian: Day 2

Today Cian and I went canoeing at the Hillsborough River State Park.

Note the 1988 flood level.  (You many need to enlarge the image in order to read the sign.)  I remember 1988.  It was a very wet year!

 There were plenty of canoes available.

 Setting out.

 You can almost believe this area still looks like it looked before the Europeans arrived.

  See the gator?

He looked really big from the canoe.  I think he was eight to ten feet long. Cian suggested that we move back.  

  The people behind us wanted a closer look.

  Notice the munchkin snapping a picture from about ten feet away.

Usually gators slip into the water as soon as they spot people in a canoe.  This one just lay there.  He was still there when we passed this spot on the way back.

Rustic beauty!

 We saw two of these purple boxes hanging from trees beside the river.  I don't know what they are.  Insect traps for researchers?

   Getting bored!

Heading back.

 

Looking After Cian

Cian is out of school for Spring Break this week.  Sherry is visiting her father in Tennessee.  So I have Cian on my own during the day Wednesday through Friday.  I had been looking forward to this with a certain amount of trepidation.  I don't think he was too excited about it either.  But, at least today, it worked out OK.


This morning I ran my usual three mile loop around the outside of the neighborhood, with Cian on his bicycle.  He spent some time on computer games both before and after.  I fixed grilled cheese sandwiches, and he ate all of his with no complaints.  He let me take a short nap after lunch.  At 1:00 I let him go to his friends, Joey and Jeffery's house to play, but they weren't at home.  So we decided to go to Lake Park. There is a BMX track there, which he wanted to try out, and I thought it would be fun just to ride our bicycles around the park.


I didn't have a bicycle rack for the car, and there was no way I could get both our bicycles into the car.  So the first step was to go out and buy a bicycle rack.  (Something that I had been wanting to do for some time.)  We did that, then came back home and packed up the bicycles and headed out to Lake Park.


We found the park pretty much deserted, surprising since it is Spring Break week for the Hillsborough Country Public Schools.  We parked at the BMX track and unloaded the bicycles. 

There was one little boy on the BMX track, and he was just leaving (under duress from his mom) as we arrived.  Cian made eight laps around the track before getting bored.  Then we rode our bicycles back to the playground beside one of the lakes.  This was about 3:00 PM and there were no kids at all on the playground equipment.


It was a very nice day, sunny, about 80 degrees.  I sat at a shaded picnic table and read ( On an Irish Island, by Robert Kanigel ) and Cian played by himself on the playground equipment.  Soon, kids started showing up, all Cian's age and down.  Eventually there were about eight.  They all played nicely.  We stayed until about 4:15, when Cian was ready to go because he knew his dad would be home soon.