Thursday, April 14, 2005
...seems to be a school day, around mid-afternoon. That's what I discovered today, my official day off from work since the conference had eaten up part of my weekend.
In the morning it was great to see my girls, and I gave them the presents I brought back for them, both of which went down well (though I seem to have made a miscalculation in giving Vanessa a taller doll than Annie -- gotta love sibling rivalry). Erika had already left for work at the squawk of dawn, so it was very much a "Daddy Day".
One of Vanessa's requests was that I join her for lunch at the cafeteria at her school. So with Annie in hand I met her there. It is obviously a big deal when a parent comes by, and Vanessa clearly wanted me to come so she could not be left out of the crowd whose parents had already come -- not to mention the fact that I hadn't seen her at all for three-and-a-half days. Bought a bunch of re-heated food for myself and the girls, and then went into the happy mayhem that is the kids' lunchroom. A harried West Indian woman armed with a hand-bell constantly went around clanging away at kids who had gotten a bit too unruly. A little boy sitting beside me told me all about his favourite show, called Teen Titans, of which I know little more than he told me (lots of fights and bad guys, apparently). It was not exactly a relaxing, peaceful lunch, but it was fun to see the barely controlled chaos and to be with my daughters again, whatever the situation.
I signed Vanessa out of school for the day and we then headed straight for the ROM, arriving sometime after 2pm. A yellow school bus was parked outside, but luckily for us, it was just finishing loading up kids rather than letting them out. So we ended up having a good chunk of the museum practically to ourselves.
We first visited the Winged Dinosaur exhibition again, and this time managed to at least see half of it before the girls wanted to rush off to see something else. The "something else" was the discovery room, where was a playroom perfect for Annie and Vanessa got to dig up a dino from the sand. Since she was the only kid there, Vanessa was allowed to take her time, and the young female assistant there -- who clearly knows a lot about dinos and doesn't always have such a singular audience -- spent a lot of time with her talking about the type of bones there and what the dino had been like when alive. With Vanessa in good hands I spent much of my time with Annie, playing with some knights, horses and a dragon in a small toy castle. Annie loves exclusive playtime with her Dad. :-)
Afterwards we made our way to the bat cave, which turns out to be genuinely creepy when you are the only ones in it, instead of being in the usual procession of people that's more typical of our other visits.
Shortly afterwards it was time to go, if only because I wanted to beat the worst of rush-hour traffic. Picked up a couple of dino-related goodies for the girls, while I picked up the Feathered Dinos catalog, which is essentially a hard-bound scientific journal talking in great detail about the bird-dino connection. Good enough for the interested layman but would have preferred something with more background and general context.
As it was a warm-ish day, I brought the bouncing castle out of the shed, followed by a pizza dinner. And then off to bed for girls. As for me, I ended up watching about half of the new "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead" DVD I bagged in the States along with Glenn, who was also a big fan of this particular movie.
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