Home away from home

I think Louka feels very at home at the museum. Today, because it's school holidays, there was a long queue to get in, reaching almost to the corner of the street. She kept trying to jump the queue.

It wasn't so bad once we were in. Louka headed straight for the dinosaurs, and stayed for a while in front of the Jobaria and Afrovenator skeletons. She knows their names now. She had to take turns playing in the sand tray and with the design-a-dinosaur computer program, so she couldn't spend so long there. We went to Kidspace and painted some seahorses, then down to the bistro for a drink and the bread rolls we'd brought with us (I'm a bit over their fish and chips). Then we wandered through the Surviving Australia exhibition, played in the virtual water table and watched a virtual crocodile swim the length of the water table, but moved along when a huge shark jumped out at us. We sat and stroked the dingo and examined the insects and seedpods under the sliding magnifying glass.

By now Louka seemed to be just wandering vaguely, and sometimes lying on the floor, so I managed to get her to leave. She walked along the stone wall along Hyde Park, but was ready to be carried the rest of the way to the station. Then, in the train, she put her head on my lap and promptly fell asleep.