Keep It Local: Family Story Time at the National Museum of the American Indian

We've been to the National Museum of the American Indian's imagiNATIONS activity center several times before, but never quite made it to one of their family storytimes, which are usually held on Sundays and Wednesdays at 11:15 a.m. So we took the opportunity of our "day off of school because daddy stole our keys" a few weeks ago to go to the Wednesday storytime.

It turned out to be super neat. I was all for it. Kane pretended to object because he just wanted to play in the stilt house kitchen, but we caught him standing still and listening (hidden from our view of course). He couldn't help it -- the book being read was a "trickster tale," called "Love and Roast Chicken: A Trickster Tale from the Andes Mountains" and told the story of a clever guinea pig who used his wits to outtrick a hungry fox. It was really funny and the reader taught us several Indian words used in the book (including "wawa," which in at least one Indian dialect means child. mom said that makes total sense -- the reader explained that Indians frequently named things based on the sound that they make and, well, according to mom, sometimes it sounds like all we say is "wawa wawa wawa ....") AND there were puppets to go along with the story. There were lots of little littles there, but we'd say we were just about the right age to get the story and the interactiveness of learning Indian words.

Afterwards, the center emptied out and we had the run of the place. We spent most of our time building the igloo, which has finally been returned to the center. We can see why it was taken out (it was hard for us not to turn the igloo circle into a WWF ring), but are glad it's back. We built and destroyed it several times and even brought in fish from the stilt house to cook.

We're going to guess the Sunday story hour is crowded (although we actually have no idea), but we'll definitely go back some other Wednesday we're "off" of school!

Spice Girls: Mayur Kabob House Food Truck

We recently made a trip back to the National Museum of the American Indian to check out their Thursday morning storytime.  I'd been there before with mommy, but Kane had never been to the imagiNATIONS exhibit and he loved it.  They've added cool "passport stamping stations" throughout -- you pick up a passport when you enter and then stamp your book as you go through the exhibit learning about different things.  It was a big hit with both of us.  We spent a while doing the drawing activity of the day and then made our way over to the library for storytime.  It turned out that there were a TON of little kids there, which made storytime hard for everyone (including the poor reader), so we spent a lot of time reading books in the library by ourselves instead.  And that worked out just fine.  We also pretended to cook up dinner in the stilt house -- when mom asked me to go "fish" in the river outside for dinner, I took a plastic bin and pulled "hot dogs" and "pizza" out.  Clearly we've been eating out too much this summer.

To that end, after storytime was over, we circled back to the L'Enfant plaza to pick up lunch from a food truck.  Kane insisted that he wanted "chicken on a stick," so we chose the Mayur Kabob House food truck.  We are both big into ordering and paying for our own food these days (another sign we've been eating out too much), and walked right up to the window and asked for "chicken on a stick, please."   We ordered a mild chicken kabob, which came with rice and two sides (we got chickpea masala and spinach curry) and naan.  It was $9.00, but it fed all of us.  And we split a side order of vegetable samosas, too.  It was way too hot to eat outside, so we metroed our lunch home and ate there.  Kane liked the chicken (although he did complain it was too spicy) and I loved the rice and chickpea masala.  The naan was AWESOME, too.  Overall, it was probably a little hot for our taste buds, but mom loved it and we'd definitely go back.  Plus, we spent a long time discussing the difference between American Indians and the Indian food from the food truck.  You just never know, you know?

Imagine all the People: imagiNATIONS at the National Museum of the American Indian

The imagiNATIONS exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian opened last fall, but we hadn't yet had a chance to go.  We arrived just as the museum opened and had the exhibit all to ourselves -- there are so many neat things to do here.  An activity center, which had a coloring project the day we visited; a wonderful library with books for kids of all ages; and, my favorite, to scale models of three different Indian dwellings.  I insisted on bringing books from the library into the house on stilts and reading in there, patting the ground next to me and saying "mommy, here.  mommy, here."  (i just started saying two- and three-word sentences).  We also checked out the current "A Song for the Horse Nation" and "The Real Story of the Quilete Wolves" exhibits and loved both of them -- such beautiful things to look at.  I also snagged a copy of "The Girl Who Loved Horses."  One of mom's favorite books growing up was "Buffalo Woman" and although the stories are both a little old for me, the pictures are amazing.  And Kane likes reading it, too.  The museum hosts all kinds of special events and activities at the imagiNATIONS exhibit, so be sure to keep your eye out and visit!

oh, we always make sure to eat at The Mitsam Cafe, even when visiting neighboring museums.  But the museum recently put in an espresso bar on the first floor, which means we'll be visiting even more often!