Celebrating creativity

Taiyo was up early in anticipation of our big trip to Queens. The sky was blue and air was cool. We went to check out World Maker Faire at Hall of Science. It's a festival of creativity, celebrating the Do-It-Yourself mindset. It was this amazing fair, crazy mixture of circus, arts, music, crafts, and science and technology geeks. There were also hands-on experience to aquire useful trade skills like hacking and lock picking. We saw coolest sculptures, musical instruments, drumming robots, a car covered with singing and dancing fishes and lobsters, rode on solar-powered carousel.

Most of the activities were not for toddlers, but Taiyo was still able to find enough things to mess with. He was so fascinated with a little electric circuit he built and kept pressing the button to shoot up a little propeller into the air for half an hour. This is going to be our must-attend event every year. Highly recommended for anyone, kids or adults. Hall of Science itself is the best place for kids. We didn't have the time to explore the regular exhibit, but they have the coolest mini-golf, where Taiyo went crazy running and climbing around. It's a big trip from our place downtown Manhattan, but it's always so worth it.

Back in the neighborhood, we went for an early dinner at Minca on 5th Street between A and B. Soon after we sat down, the place filled up, even thouth it was only 5pm. If I ask him what he wants to eat these days, Taiyo often says, "Gyoza." So I knew he was going to love this place. The space is tiny, and there's not much room for strollers. There's no high chair, but they are pretty kid-friendly- the waitress promptly brought Taiyo a glass of water with a straw, a small bowl with plastic fork, soup spoon, and a pair of chopsticks with plastic holder to help him use them. Taiyo ate all the skin from gyoza (that's what he cares for most of the time, anyway), and slurped ramen noodles. He loved the food enough that he didn't mind not having the room to jump around in between his bites. Considering the small space and the fact that they get pretty crowded, it's probably not the great choice to dine out with kids, but the food is darn good. I think they got the best Japanese ramen in town.

Afterwards we hit Tompkins Square Park playground. Maybe he was inspired by the Maker Faire earlier, Taiyo sat down in the sand box and worked on his twig installation for quite a while. He didn't even notice lots of sand were going into his shoes. He nomally freaks out if a little bit of it gets into his shoes or clothes. Creativity overcame his fear.