What was I thinking?

So, I got home from the fund-raiser this morning (which was pretty much a bust, unfortunately) to find out that Todd needed to go to work for about five hours. Yesterday was not so great, and I didn't feel too excited about several hours alone at home with the kids, so I decided to make good on a promise to Ben: to take him into Boston to go up in the elevator in the Prudential building.

Now, the plan had been to go with just Ben and not Sarah, but I started thinking that it might be weeks until that would actually work, so I decided to just go for it today. It did cross my mind that I was probably crazy to try it - should have listened to that inner voice, but at least we've done it now and Ben was happy.

The first step was to ride the T into town (see photo, which is not very good!). Ben has been on it before but he probably doesn't remember, and Sarah never had ridden on it till today. Ben loved the ride; Sarah started out OK but she got pretty frustrated when she couldn't walk around. The first train was not too crowded so I let her explore a little, as much as felt safe (not much) and that kept her mostly happy. But on the second train it was much more crowded and there just wasn't a way for her to wander safely, or at all. And she screamed the whole time. We cleared out the whole section around us because she was so loud. And fighting to get out of my arms the whole time.

After two train rides, several elevator rides, and a long, slow walk through the shopping corridors, we made it to the main elevator. It goes to the observatory deck, which I did back in '95 when I was visiting Boston for the early music festival, but now it would have cost about $40 for us to go look so we just rode up and came back down. Ben didn't mind, and Sarah was pretty oblivious.

Here's Ben on the way up, with the "50" button lit up. (Sorry for another not-too-great photo.) Honestly, I should have listened to Todd when he said that it wouldn't take 50 floors to make Ben happy. I mean, he liked the ride, but I don't think he rated it any better than any other elevator. So I've learned my lesson. And I've also learned: Sarah is not yet ready to ride the T!

We ate dinner at the food court then pretty much came back home. A four-hour excursion for an elevator ride... was it worth it? I don't know... but at least Ben enjoyed it. Sarah still screamed on the train rides back. But she learned a lesson too - when we were getting close to the station where we parked, I was letting her roam just a bit, and at one point the train lurched a little and she started to get pulled backwards from the force of gravity. And it really scared her - I grabbed her just as quickly as I could and she was perfectly fine, but she clung to me the rest of the ride and was completely quiet. That is unusual for her!

This is just a fun picture of Sarah - yesterday in the car we discovered that she loves playing with these sunglasses. Last summer they were Ben's but they fit her now. She puts them on in all sorts of funny ways, and sometimes even the correct way - and she tries to put them on Nemo also. Yesterday she was wearing them up on top of her head, talking on a pretend phone, and I thought I caught a glimpse of Sarah, the teenage years! Anyway, today I caught a shot of her looking cool and wanted to share it. She is clutching Nemo (of course) and also our stuffed lobster acquired at the LLBean store in Maine. Both the kids love looking at the lobsters in the tank at the grocery store. I named this lobster Lucky - thinking that he's lucky not to be in a tank, LOL!