Children and the Aquarium

I took the boys to the Georgia Aquarium yesterday. If you ever come to Atlanta, I would highly recommend the aquarium. It's one of the largest ones in the country, but it doesn't feel like you have to walk for miles to see everything. The best characteristic about the aquarium is that they have large tanks with a variety of species. The best tank is the Ocean Voyager. I can't even describe how huge it is. It has four whale sharks in it that average about 20 - 30 feet in length. The big viewing room has a huge floor to ceiling window that is about 20 feet high and 40 or so feet long. You can sit right in front of the window and watch the fish swim by you. It is absolutely awesome.

So, the boys and I decided to go yesterday. They had been begging to go for awhile. We have yearly passes, so it only costs us the price of parking. Since it's summer, it was unbelieveably busy. Nathan did well for a while, but he always gets a little upset around large crowds. We had to wait in a long line to get some lunch, and just as we were going through the line to pay, he decided it was just too much, and he started to just wail. Of course, I'm holding a tray with all our food, so it's impossible for me to hold him. He wasn't throwing a temper tantrum or running around or flailing on the floor, he was just crying. To make it even worse, there is this older lady in front of me who kept giving me dirty looks. I'm not sure what exactly she expected me to do. I mean, come on, it could have been a lot worse. All he was doing was standing beside me, crying. Why is that total strangers feel the need to judge you when your children are not being the perfect little angels. I'm sure she could tell from the look on my face that I was a little stressed, but there was absolutely no compassion on her face. She's probably one of those people who gets upset when she sees a family walk into a family restaurant like Applebee's too.

In the end, we had a good time, but I'll probably wait until a day when it's not so busy to take the boys back.