I took my 19 month-old son, 6 year-old niece and 10 year-old nephew to the Tucson Children's Museum this past Sunday. None of the kids had been to the museum yet. I was so excited to see how they would like it. The older kids were practically jumping out of their shoes at the description of the experience to come! My sister-in-law joined us so we could divide and conquer to keep track of everybody.

We grown-ups only expected to be there for a little over an hour. Our children's museum is wonderful, but it is a bit smaller than others I have seen. Well, in the end, we only left the museum after two and a half hours because they were closing it down! The kids could have easily stayed much longer!

My son, the youngest of the kids, loved the police motorcycle, fire truck, and the coloring center. He could have easily spent his time running between these three things. When I finally convinced him to move to wee world (a lovely, padded playground for the little guys) he spent a good amount of energy rearranging, climbing and jumping around there. That is, until he discovered the Mind Your Body area which provided him with a shopping cart that he could fill and empty, and most importantly, run around like a maniac with! It was hilarious. He had the best time playing with the "grocery store cash register" and loading up his grocery cart.

The older kids enjoyed the Electri-city exhibits but became enamored with the rope and mat gym exercise. They each connected their belts to every color of rope and climbed around each other to follow them to their other end. My nephew absolutely loved the dinosaur exhibit and corraled us all into the room when the show was to begin. He wanted to make sure we could all speak intelligently on the topic later. While tons of fun was had in the light room, the music room, the dinosaur room, and the aqua room; nothing really equaled the excitement of the health area. Immediately, my niece went into the new "veterinarian's office" area, put on a smock and cap and began treating her new patients. She was in there for the longest time. My nephew marveled at how he could hear his heartbeat translated by a little bass drum and how it got quicker after running around the room a few times. The older kids also got a huge kick out of the giant Operation game.

There were more fun, funny and exciting moments in those few hours at the Children's Museum than I could possibly recount all at once. The long and the short of it is this: GO! The Tucson Children's museum is a wonderful, safe place to take kids of almost any age to have a wonderful time filled with fun and discovery. I live here in Tucson and will absolutely be getting a membership so we can come back time and time again!