Celebrating the dream, California style

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, C and I headed back down to Exposition Park to visit the California African American Museum.

This area is Museum Central, well, more like Museum South-of-Downtown (can't forget about Miracle Mile). We visited the Natural History Museum last week, and there's also the California Science Center (where I had an unfortunate fainting incident at the Body Worlds exhibit several years ago. Will leave that horrifically embarrassing moment for another blog post. Let's just say I get weak in the knees at the sight of sinew. Ick. Let's move on.)

Anyway, I thought it was important to visit the museum on this particular holiday in this particular year, when we're about to make history as a nation. I know C doesn't realize the importance of what's going on in the world. In fact, she might think this is just one more place Mom takes her where she's not allowed to touch anything. But I wanted her to have a connection, even if to her it's just looking at pretty pictures.

Lucky for us, it was also Target Sunday at the museum, where admission was free to all the exhibits and included music, speeches and a kids' workshop. Not to get schmaltzy, but it was pretty moving seeing all of these children of different races sitting around a table making crafts together. Unfortunately, it was a little too much for C, who instead wanted to take in the artwork, sometimes at high speed.

Let's just say there were a few threats of going home when she decided to use the museum as her personal racetrack, darting and weaving through glass-enclosed (read: expensive) artifacts in an effort to lose her mother.

But the chase was worth it. Today was a hot, dry, sunny, Southern California afternoon, where my child was in shorts and a ponytail wandering through history, getting a glimpse of the future, and feeling completely at home the whole time.

(LA Moms Blog Update: I also posted this weekend about Barack Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, and their potential for being girls our daughters can look to as backpack-wearing alternatives to pop tarts Britney and Lindsay.)