An Aquatic Adventure

Last weekend, for the first time in what felt like forever, the Molloy family had absolutely no plans. On Saturday, it was lovely to just hang out in the house and play at the playground, without any kind of time restraints or car trips. By Sunday, however, we were all a little restless and ready to do something more adventurous than our living room. After experiencing Ellie’s enthusiasm over seeing real live horses for the first time over the holidays (see previous blog), we thought it would be a good time to go see some other live animals. The weather was actually really nice last weekend, so the zoo would’ve been bearable, but we opted instead to go to the aquarium, where most of the action is warmly indoors.

We decided to go ahead and get a family season pass, as you only have to go twice in one year to cover the cost, and we thought it was another fun family outing option (we also have a season pass to the Please Touch Museum, which we have used in abundance and definitely gotten our money’s worth!). Ellie’s reaction to seeing real live fish was not quite the same as with the horses. She certainly didn’t dislike it, but she didn’t jump for joy and beg people to show her more, either.

The whole atmosphere of the aquarium is actually a little intimidating, and I can see why she was a little standoffish about it. First of all, it is dark in there. Not mood-lighting kind of dark, but more like I-have-to-hold-her-hand-at-all-times-because-if-she-takes-a-few- steps-I-won’t-be-able-to-see-her-anymore dark. And there was this creepy instrumental music playing that made the atmosphere eerie and a little scary. It wasn’t the theme to Jaws or anything, but it still felt like the fish could at any moment jump out of the glass and eat you.

Despite the initial intimidation of the experience, there were many things that Ellie really enjoyed about our visit. She loved the seals and the penguins, and we got to see both of them being fed and doing tricks, which was really fun. She also liked the big tank that had lots of various kinds of (enormous) fish, turtles and stingrays. Ellie could stand right up against the glass and the fish all swam by constantly so there was lots of action to watch. We even got to watch some divers go into the tank to clean it and feed the fish, which was really cool. The only things she didn’t really care for were the hippos (which were pretty scary, and they kept sticking their gross, hairy noses up against the glass so it looked like they were going to bite us) and the sharks, which were displayed by visitors walking through a huge tunnel so there were all of these enormous sharks surrounding us. She didn't cry or anything, just shook her head and said "No, no" in this sad soft little voice and grabbed our hands and started walking out of the room.

It was quite an adventure though, and we look forward to going again on many a cold winter Sunday. And I think she'll grow to love the hippos and sharks with time. Either that or we'll spend lots of weekends hanging out with penguins.