Driving all the way to Seattle for a single thirty minute appointment sucks. That's why we got a membership at the Pacific Science Center; if the appointment was early enough or late enough, we could spend a couple of hours at PacSci to make the long drive more palatable. Yesterday was our first visit with Evanna's wheelchair. We ended up leaving early in frustration. We've always enjoyed the Pacific Science Center, but we'll definitely need to cross this one off our list of fun places to visit for now. I'll likely still take the kids if there's a traveling exhibit I want them to see for school, but not just for fun.
We started at the insects. We were going to see the butterflies, but it was very busy with a large school group and another large school group waiting to go in.
We moved to the adjacent room and the touch tank and toddler area in it. The touch tank is accessed by stairs with no ramp. The employee reminded us that we needed to wash hands only after we had lifted her chair up the steps. He quickly waived the requirement after realizing there was no she could reach the water. I ended up having to take her out of her chair to sit on the fake rock wall to have any chance of seeing/touching anything. At that point, she decided she was afraid of the one starfish the couple of hermit crabs within reach.
So I took her to the adjacent toddler area where I had to take her out of her chair to access most things.
There was someone reading a book to kids interested in listening. She crawled up and helped open the flaps. The other child listening given a chance to open flaps too.
We moved on to other areas but found most activities were too high. At this point, we decided to just go and visit the Seattle Center's playground for a while.
This was the best part of the day. This merry-go-round was specifically designed to accommodate wheelchairs. One boy took charge and got the other kids to stop, told another kid to get out of the wheelchair area, and made sure Evanna was able to wheel on. What a great kid!
The accessible swing was a little big.
But she loved this swing after I convinced her to try it with me.
She crawled up the steps of the little kid structure and slid down...face first, of course. (Sarcasm font because we've taught her to always go feet first.)
I helped her stand so she could drop rocks into the cage. Inside the cage are metal discs of different sizes that make different tones when the rocks hit them. We found it challenging to stand on the uneven ground even with me doing most of the work holding her up, so she preferred crawling through them.
At this point, it was time to head out, so we left for the car and our appointment...which is worthy of it's own post.
