National Aquarium

The images coming out of Japan are terrible. Americans who want to help can go to www.redcross.org and donate to Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami. You can also text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation to help those affected by the earthquake in Japan and tsunami throughout the Pacific.

To take a break from the horrible news of the earthquake, we took the kids to the National Aquarium in Baltimore today.  Now, I confess, I generally compare everything to Seattle, because Seattle rules, the end. And the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle kicks the National Zoo's ass around the block and back, while wearing shorts in the rain with sunglasses but no umbrella. Ahem.

Anyway, the National Aquarium is beautiful.  The Seattle Aquarium is basically a dump in comparison. Although I'm not sure if we'll be back before we get sent overseas (NO, WE DON'T KNOW YET), we bought the annual family membership. You know you've been breeding too heavily if it's cheaper to buy a membership than pay for one day's admission for your family.  Who would have thought a full moon and a little champagne would double our number of kids and require us to buy memberships to everything and two hotel rooms wherever we go?


There was a pretty great dolphin show. We were one row away from getting splashed, but I had Grace sit on my lap to protect myself just in case, because I'm an awesome mom. Hey, my hair is hard enough to deal with on the east coast without a bunch of damn dolphins messing it up.

It would have been a perfect day but for one incident. On our way into the exhibits, we saw a sweet little boy who had obviously had some serious facial and head trauma. After seeing this little guy, Henry was ruined for the rest of the day. He was wiping tears on his sleeve for about an hour, until the dolphin show. He cheered up during the show, but unfortunately, he ran into the kid on our way out. This caused him to just lose it and I had to take him out of the Aquarium. We hung out in a nearby restaurant while Mitch took the other kids to finish looking at the exhibits. I should have swapped with him because Mitch is the philosopher in the family and generally always says the right thing. Henry wanted to know why life is so unfair and why a little kid should have to endure so much. I told him the best thing he could do for that little boy is treat him the way he would want to be treated, and likely, that is just like he was everybody else. My words didn't help much. We hung out and snacked a little while we waited, but Henry was pretty much ruined for the day, and when we got back home he had a total meltdown. One of the posts that is a very high possibility for us is in India. Thank Gah, because my sensitive little guy won't have any problems dealing with inhumanity there.