Habitot - The Latest Version of Baby Crack

Yesterday Nikos and I decided to go up and try out Habitot for the first time. Habitot is an awesome children's museum that is in downtown Berkeley, not far from our house. We have heard lots of good things from Mel, Meredith and Liz so I was really excited to try it out. If we walk up to the museum it is about 2 miles, or, if we are feeling lazy, we can walk a mile to bart and take it one stop and end up right at the museum.

I bundled Nikos up because it was a still a little cold when we were leaving to walk up there. Here he shows off his new hat that I just got him at Gymboree (love 30% off Circle of Friends sale!) -- I had him try it on to make sure it fit and he refused to take it off for about 2 hours.

How big is Nikos?


Of course, after we arrived at the museum I decided it was so cool and soooo convenient that I would buy the Family Circle pass - which lets us take any 6 people (6 total including us) for free for a year. Since it would have been $15 a visit for Nikos and I (and $22 when Taki was able to come) I figured it would be totally worth it. So feel free to sign up for your free trip in the Comments. :)

We ran into a few playgroups there as well as moms with younger children, so I think that since I am prego solo this time (boo Katie!) I will be crashing here a lot with baby #2. Did I mention there is a Starbucks right on the corner? Ha.

First we headed to the spaceship exhibit, Nikos was a big fan of playing with the Styrofoam-looking blocks and building little towers. Of course, in the midst of all this he also dove full out at a Starbucks cup one of the moms had set down on the makeup/face painting table. I laughed and told her it was because it was the one thing he recognized in the place.

Next up was Brooke's favorite exhibit, the water feature! I learned from Meredith's post and stripped Nikos down to his onesie before putting the little apron on - since I forget to bring an extra set of clothes for the way home.

After playing with the water for awhile we made our way over to the Baby and Toddler Garden. Nikos played with the toy carrots in the garden and a few of the puzzles. He loved climbing in and out of this little playhouse (ha - only a 10%er could fit through that little entry hole!)

Here he spends time bouncing a ball against the wall. Where did he learn this? I think he is practicing to someday beat Pop-Pop at racquetball.

Next up the art room and by far Nikos' favorite exhibit in the whole place. He LOVED painting. I, of course, found it adorable so took way too many pictures. Enjoy our little budding Picasso.




Did I mention both of us ended up pretty much covered in paint? So fun! Good thing I was only wearing my "Knocked Up" shirt and Juicy sweats and not something fancy. The wall he was painting was like a dry erase board of sorts, that the staff could just wash down when the kids were finished. They also had little pieces of construction paper that you could pin up for the kids to paint and then hang them to dry and take them home. I think we will do this next time. We probably spent an hour in this room. He even enjoyed standing at the sink to be washed off - I think we went through the paint/wash cycle like three times.

After painting until our hearts were content, we headed over to the wind tunnel to play with the leaves, baskets and brooms. Niko spent most of the time putting the leaves into one of the baskets. Obviously he sees me piling a bunch of our junk into baskets at home and he has never seem me sweep, so he was stumped on what to do with the broom. (I am sure if they would have had an iron in this exhibit he would have been equally confused.)

After the wind tunnel we headed over to the grocery store where Nikos piled a bunch of fruit into his cart. Much like real life, he avoided the vegetable section like it was the plague. I think he has been spending too much time with Uncle Vernie.

Next up - the trains! Here we worked on sharing (which we have had a bit of an issue with lately) but he did okay. At least he didn't try to knock anyone over or grab their train car.

...Sorry, had to take a small break from blogging to visit the Crayola website to see if their sidewalk chalk was edible...or at least nontoxic. While I have been blogging Nikos has been playing on his chalkboard and with his little plastic pumpkins. He just crawled over to me and his mouth was surrounded by green and the green chalk crayon was suspiciously missing from view. Good news is that all Crayola products are nontoxic and I found the Green chalk...well, most of it anyway...

After the trains we were back to the Space Shuttle. Nikos played with the controls and took a call from Mission Control. I think he I heard him saying "Houston, we don't have any problems."

After a few hours of play I packed Nikos up into the stroller and we walked home. He feel asleep on the way so I took advantage of it and stopped for a few slices at Gioia. What a perfect day!