art appreciation 101

let's be honest. low blood sugar + a family outing to the museum of art = a recipe for disaster. last weekend we decided to put our museum membership to good use. as you can tell from ben's expression, he had a blast. that's what my face looked like, as well as the museum employees who were afraid that our son might bulldoze their entire collection of ancient mayan art. we left the museum after about 20 minutes of bonner family fun (or before we were kindly asked to leave).

and because i am a glutton for punishment, yesterday we went back. the museum offers toddler art classes free with the price of admission. each class has a different theme. this week the theme focused on those beautiful ancient mexican artifacts that ben had set out to destroy a few days earlier. i had my running shoes ready to grab ben and bolt out of the museum doors the second he tried to sneak under the barrier rope around the art.

but it never happened. he held my hand. he didn't touch the art. he listened attentively to the story about the ancient tradition of summoning the rain. he made rain noises with his body. he pointed out rectangles, circles, and triangles in the mexican sculptures. he learned the words "amigo", "hola", and "adios". he made his very own "rainmaker" and decorated it with markers and stickers. and then he shook the daylights out of it. hopefully it works...we could use some more rain.

as it was nearing lunchtime, i picked my jaw up off the floor and led ben through the museum toward the exit. he began begging to go see the elephant mask in the african mask exhibit. you see, on that terrible museum outing, chris and i tried to salvage ben's mood by taking him to see the african masks. we didn't think it actually worked considering he whined throughout the entire exhibit.

but he remembered. so with a grateful heart, i held his hand without fear of him running from my grip and we went to see his beloved elephant mask. and i had one of those golden motherhood moments as i was holding my child's hand in the museum talking about art:

this is how i always imagined it would be.