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Spring Break Day 3: The Getty
Rapunzel wants to be an artist when she grows up. I think this is really really cool, of course. However, she thinks that she doesn’t need to go to college because “artists don’t need school,” she says. I may have said something stupid a long time ago about how colleges these days are just big businesses that take all your money and you really don’t need them to get a good job anymore. Me and my big fat mouth. So I decided I need to show her why college is so important, even if you want to be an artist.
I took Rapunzel to the Getty today. My idea was that I would show her all the different kinds of art and she’d get a taste for finding out the stories behind the pictures. Art history can be so fascinating. That is my one regret with my own college career. I didn’t major in art and I never studied art history. I feel I’m at a real disadvantage because I don’t know anything about cubism or impressionism or the arts and crafts period etc. etc. These are all just words to me that I know would be really useful if I only knew what they meant.
It turns out that I still don’t know much about art and I didn’t do a very good job of inspiring Rapunzel to get excited about it either. “It’s kinda boring,” she admitted to me in the most polite way she could. I had to agree with her in part. It’s not Disneyland. There aren’t any rides or anything. Still, I think for what it is, we had a pretty good time. One of these days I think we both need to go through the museum on a guided tour and really get to the bottom of it all. Why did Van Gogh cut his ear off anyway? Any kind of tour seemed out of the question with Baby Bug in tow. But maybe next time when she’s bigger.
We really enjoyed exploring the vast grounds and gardens. We even had a picnic lunch (that I packed) on the not-so-dry grass outside. I love the grounds at the Getty. I wrote about this a long time ago when Toby and I visited. (I have no idea where that link went.) The neat thing about the Getty is that every where you go, there is a new vista point with something interesting to look at and go see. There is always something new on the horizon to go explore. It was great fun for all of us.
I think the best part of the Getty for us was the Children’s Museum though. Mostly because I finally got to let Baby Bug out of the stroller and she was so happy to be able to wander around freely touching things. I think it was hard for her to be strapped in most of the day. Rapunzel really liked all the interactive displays and they both got a kick out of coloring their own masks. I’m really glad the Getty had a exhibit like that. Everywhere else we went, the guards were constantly telling us not to touch, not to take pictures and not to wade through the water. (Imagine that!) It can be tough for a “free spirit” when there are so many rules. I mean, the water is right there just begging to be walked in! Poor Rapunzel, she sort of “fell in by accident.”
When we got home, we were in the mood to make our own art. Rapunzel painted with acrylics and I made some “finger paint” for Baby Bug. I read somewhere that you can make kid-safe finger paint out of pudding with food coloring in it. It seemed like a great idea. Except I didn’t have any pudding on hand so I used some plain yogurt instead.
The only problem with the neat colored yogurt is that Baby Bug loves to eat yogurt, plain or otherwise. The first thing she did was take a big ol’ swipe of blue and shove it in her mouth. I tried to show her how fun it was to smear it on the paper but she was more interested in eating it. So much for finger painting. I decided to cut my losses and bring out some dinner for her to eat too.
You could say she made art out of dinner or dinner out of art, depending on how you look at it.
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the zoo blew
We went to the San Diego Zoo yesterday. This trip had been planned for months and months. I was so excited to go. Baby Bug and I read about animals in her books all the time. I thought this would be the cat’s pajamas for her to see real live “oooh oooh aaah aaah’s” (monkeys) and giraffes and lions and tigers and bears. Oh my! It would be just like Disneyland except not so fake and probably not as crowded. Sounds like fun!
Well, I was wrong. The Zoo stank. Don’t misunderstand me though, I love the zoo and I think the zoo is super fun. It’s just not so fun for one-year-olds. One-year-olds don’t like looking at cages with sleeping animals. They’d rather play with the wire fencing or pick leaves off the ground or examine dried chewing gum stuck under the bottom of railings. Anything but look at the boring animals.
I don’t know why I forgot that animals sleep all the time when you’re at the zoo because I remember clearly being very disappointed about the exact same thing when I was a young excited eight-year-old. When you go to the zoo, all the animals sleep. That’s all they do. And if they’re not sleeping then they are leaning up a against a wall looking depressed.
The worst is when you walk all the way over to the other side of the park, all excited to see some polar bears “plunging” into icy cold water and playing with rubber balls and eating fish… and when you get there, NOTHING. Nada. Zip! The polar bears are sleeping! Even worse, they’re hiding in their caves sleeping so you can’t even look at their sad yellow fur!
I turned to Toby and said, “I remember, the last time we were at the zoo, making a mental note to go straight to the polar bear exhibit in the morning because that’s when they’re up doing things.”
(We got to the zoo at two, a very sad and pathetic time to get there considering they close at four.)
Toby said, “I remember making a mental note to skip the polar bears all together.”
Hmph! So why did we both forget our mental notes and cart a squirmy impatient and very bored one-year-old with us all the way over to the other side of the park to see the icy blue polar bear pool with no polar bears in it? I have no idea.
I think it’s parental amnesia or something. Just like we somehow forgot that we are on a budget and we weren’t supposed to buy Baby Bug any stuffed animals. She needs more stuffed animals like a hole in her head.
All in all, I do think the zoo was fun. We just had to do it at our own pace. We had to lower our expectations. So what if we just look at hoofed animals and birds, that’s okay. How many little goats and deer can there be anyway? A LOT. Sheesh! I think every little goat and small deer in the world is represented along the “Horn and Hoof Mesa.”
Baby Bug did like the fish in the Rain Forest Aviary and I got a kick out of the orangutans. You can get right up close to them and pretend to scratch their hairy backs. But they did look a bit depressed. Zoo’s can be so sad sometimes, even an excellent zoo like the San Diego Zoo.
I would definitely go again but I think it will be way way way more fun when Baby Bug is three or even five. I think she’s just as happy playing in the park with leaves and grass as she is looking at giant giraffe heads coming at her. I think the best part of the zoo for her was just spending time with both her mom and dad. Even though Toby is at home every day and she plays with him every day, it’s very rare that we spend the day hanging out together just for fun. I say, lets do more of that.
This is not the pesty post. I’m still simmering on that one.
