Yesterday the Girls and I went to the Museum of Natural History. I will never forget the impression this Museum made on me the first time we went – it is amazing! Maya has asked many times to return and for some reason we have just not made it there again until now. I think that in the midst of winter when you really need the indoor spaces, the value of places like this become paramount..and so…with lots of fresh snow on the ground and some of the coldest days of Winter ahead we made the journey to the Museum to explore the World.

Maya has a fascination with skeletons, a real desire to know more…often she wants to know the name of each bone she can locate and so the first thing she said once entering the Museum was, “I want to see the big dinosaur bones” and so we spent a lot of time on the fourth floor looking at the fossils. Her next mission was to locate a Blue Duiker, which is an animal she saw in a book. Maya was very intent on finding it, independently searching while Elle and I sat on a bench. Three times we went back to the nocturnal rain forest until she found it. I was so happy to see her interest and her focus on this beautiful endangered creature.

After hours of running around the museum from display to display I had two tired and worn out Girls – Mission accomplished! At one point the two of them were laying on the ground shoeless, under the belly of the life size blue whale suspended from the ceiling, the dark ocean world is prefect place for a little rest time. We then had an afternoon pick-me-up snack at the upstairs cafe. It was lovely to sit at the bench with natural light and look out at the the architecture and gardens. Sadly, before we knew it, it was time to head home again and so we donned our snow boots once more and rode the express B train back home to Brooklyn.