If there is one sacred institution in Baltimore, it is the Aquarium. Whenever the name of this prized downtown attraction is mentioned, eyes close in rapture and turn to the heavens. "It is just in-CREDible." "Mind-blowing." "I could spend a month there!"

After years of going with the conventional wisdom, praising the Aquarium, assuming I must be missing something in my visits there, I'm ready to admit: I don't get it.

Putting aside the absolutely absurd prices—which are quite unwieldy to put aside, as I'll get back to—I just don't get the great appeal of the place. Of my several visits as a kid, I mostly remember the monotony of fish tank after fish tank. Maybe the first couple bright-yellow fish were cool, but I just didn't care that this one has a pointy nose, that one squirts ink when it's scared. I remember walking a lot, I remember huge crowds. Of course, we never got to see any of the dolphin shows or movies—they cost extra—so we only saw the main exhibits. I remember feeling pretty much the same as I felt on all the museum field trips we took with school: "I'm bored, but at least I'm not at school. When's lunch?"

Over the 15 or so years after my last adolescent visit to the Aquarium, I heard the relentless drumbeat of praise for the place and I gradually changed my tune. I must not have gone to the really cool exhibits. Maybe they've added something since I was there. I was so immature then—I'm sure I'd appreciate it now. I started to believe the hype. When out-of-towners came to Baltimore, I told them they must go to the Aquarium. "It's magical," I imagined.

I moved away, got married, had kids. I remember one of our first trips back to Baltimore after having Jack. We were walking around the Inner Harbor, checking out the Science Center, the Pavilions, and I had a great idea: "Let's go to the Aquarium!" As we rushed to the pier, I babbled to Jack about what a magical experience he was going to have—then we saw the prices: $24.95 just to get in the door. Each! $27.95 if you want to see the dolphin show. If you also want to go to the 4D Immersion Theater, well, you might have to refinance your home. Rather than spend upwards of $100, we bailed, but I still assumed I was missing something.

After we moved to Baltimore, I heard about "Dollar Days." Every year for one weekend in December, all downtown attractions, including the Aquarium, reduce their fees to $1. Now was our chance, I thought.

On the first Dollar Day, the Aquarium was a packed madhouse. This was no surprise, of course, since it's the only weekend of the year when the majority of Baltimoreans—those without hundreds of dollars in disposable income—can afford see our city's crown jewel attraction. I tried to get Jack, then two years old, excited about the manatees and giant sea turtles, but after a few minutes, he lost interest. The succession of aquaria were only occasionally exciting. For him, the highlights were the tubes of water near the entrance to the main exhibit hall where bubbles shoot up and down, and the wood-plank bridge connecting two levels. Oh, and, of course, lunch.

Needless to say, "Dollar Days" do not include admission to the dolphin show or 4D Immersion Theater. But the Aquarium did let some of the attendees into the dolphin show arena to watch the porpoises in training. Suddenly, Jack came alive. He loved watching the dolphins jump and flip and splash—this was a show. I left that day kinda down on the Aquarium, but still thinking maybe Jack was too young to appreciate it. A few months later, I had the opportunity to go the new dolphin show—for free!—and I wrote about it on this blog. We had a great time and, as you can see, I was still giving our treasured institution the benefit of the doubt.

But after a subsequent visit and underwhelmng testimonials from my nieces, ages 7 and 9, I'm ready to admit that I don't get what's so great about the Aquarium. Granted we've never been to the 4D Immersion Theater—maybe it truly is transcendant—but I'm not ready to take on a second job to save up for it. And, yes, we loved the dolphin show, but it really bothers me that you have to pay extra for it. Two of the first three exhibits listed on the Aquarium web site are the ones you have to pay extra for. At $25 per person, I think there should be a little more emphasis on the main attractions.

I should add that I can only begin to imagine the vast resources, in terms of staff, equipment, and kelp, it must take to keep the Aquarium running. John Lewis's excellent story, "The Life Aquatic," about the Aquarium's inner workings earlier this year was fascinating and really put into persepctive how vast an enterprise the place really is.

It's possible—likely even—that I'm just an outlying scrooge. After all, they have lines out to Pratt St. every weekend, so they must be doing something right. Maybe my brain is somehow smaller in the area that appreciates the Aquarium the way it's also deficient in the area that appreciates classical music. But I also wonder if there are others out there who, like me, never really understood the great appeal of the Aquarium, were aghast at the prices, but kept quiet, assuming they were alone. To them, I say, "You're not alone!" To everyone else, please tell me, convince me: What do you love about the Aquarium? What am I missing?

[photo courtesy daveb_md via flickr.com]

There goes another thing I swore I’d never do before having kids…

In those care-free days (at least that’s how I remember them now), I self-righteously poo-poo’ed the trend of using subterfuge to get kids to eat their vegetables. The idea, popularized in Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (wife of Jerry), is to puree vegetables and add them to foods kids will eat, resulting in recipes like meatloaf (with carrots) and quesadillas (with butternut squash). Kids should learn to love vegetables, I thought, not be tricked into eating them! Oh, and I also thought my kids would never watch television and only play with wooden toys.

And, actually, we never had to resort to these tactics with our older son, Jack. While he has always had a tolerate-hate relationship with vegetables, Jack has always loved fruit. So, we figured the bananas, grapes, strawberries, and apples he ate on a daily basis, along with the cucumbers, carrots, and broccoli he managed to choke down on occasion was nutritionally sufficient. For the most part, Jack liked healthy food—tofu was among his favorites until recently, when, out of the blue, he decided he didn’t like it (I’m convinced one of the kids at his school told him it was supposed to be gross). And now that he’s able to completely communicate and use logic (call it “the age of reason”), even when he doesn’t want to eat healthy food, we can use incentive and/or punishment to encourage him.

But Benny, now 20 months old, has been a different story. Although he is much more compliant than his brother in so many ways, Benny refuses to eat pretty much any fruits or vegetables. For a long time, our pediatricians told us, he was getting most of the nutrition he needed from milk. But when we started to phase out the bottle, we were at a loss. No matter how hungry he was, Benny would simply refuse to eat anything “healthy.” He seemed to have a sixth sense for the stuff. He’ll eat endless chicken, turkey, meatballs, etc., and, of course, bread, cereal, and pasta, but if he accidentally put a zuchinni bit or broccoli floret that had been mixed in with his pasta in his mouth, he would immediately spit it out, as if it had set off some invisible sensor. Yogurt mixed with fruit and occasionally applesauce were the only reliable sources of fruits or vegetables.

We’ve tried not letting him have other foods unless he eats vegetables, but after maybe an hour of whining/screaming, we would usually relent and give him some turkey breast or cheerios. I suppose we could have been tougher and put him to bed hungry, but then we would likely all suffer.

Inspiration came a few weeks ago when we brought some beautiful zuchinni home from the farmer’s market. I looked up a recipe for zuchinni bread—which included two large zuchinnis in a small loaf, along with, of course, lots of butter and sugar—and made it. Benny couldn’t get enough. While it lasted, we gave him zuchinni bread instead of cheerios for breakfast, and instead of turkey for lunch. A few days later, my wife cut some broccoli into tiny pieces and mixed it with ground turkey to make meatballs. Benny devoured them! There were a few moments when he seemed to pause with something in his mouth—we were sure he was onto us—but he just kept putting the green stuff away.

We haven’t yet experimented with purees—and we haven’t bought the book yet—but we’re sold on the idea, at least as a stopgap measure. We intend to keep serving salad and grilled vegetables for dinner every night, and putting them on Benny’s plate, but until he’s convinced of how delicious they are, he’ll be getting what he needs. In his mashed potatoes.

Anybody have other ideas?

“It rained at Woodstock, and it might rain at KidStock too,” one of the event’s announcers said from the stage just before headliners Milkshake took the stage yesterday afternoon.

But the fleeting showers didn’t dampen the spirits of the dancing toddlers at Garrett Heights Elementary-Middle School in Hamilton-Lauraville yesterday, nor those of Milkshake frontwoman Lisa Mathews or the band, who gamely played their high energy hits for about an hour.

Besides Milkshake, we got a chance to see guitarist Tracey Eldridge with violinist John Glik, and the Little Maestros Band from Bethesda. We were in a drum circle tent, playing West African djembes and dunduns when the heavy rain hit. We just pounded our drums a little harder and waited it out. Our forebears at Woodstock would have been proud.

On a different note, there is now a Learning to Crawl fan page on Facebook. Click here to join. Thanks!

Having kids has, without doubt, given me the greatest joy of my life.

It has also often left me tired, angry, snappy and annoyed. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation or the endless rounds of The Why-ing Game, but I find that little things that I might otherwise let roll off my back really get to me these days. A couple of examples…

1. Calling Toddlers Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Okay, I can see that on some level, at some time, this might have been considered cute and/or clever, but in my experience, it has long since passed over into gross and wildly inappropriate. It is also fairly endemic. At my boys’ pre-school, teachers often say to boy students “Are you my boyfriend?” or “How’s my boyfriend?” Worse, they often feign being hurt/dumped when the toddlers say “No.” Worse still, some say crap like “Are you flirting with me? Ooh boy, you really like to flirt!” And inevitably, if a kid smiles at them, they’ll say something like, “Oh, he’s going to break girls hearts some day.” Or, if it’s a girl, “You better lock her up from the boys.” What the hell is that? They’re three years old! They’re not flirting, they’re stacking blocks and frequently stopping to pick their noses! For all you know, they’ll be gay! They might be breaking little boys hearts some day. Point being, we won’t know for at least 10 years or so, so quit it!

And God help the confused children if they figure out the meaning or implication of words like boyfriend or flirt. I’ve never been anything like a prude, but connoting grown-up relationships or anything remotely sexualized to toddlers is pretty messed up. To get a sense of how wrong this is, imagine if a male pre-school teacher constantly called a little girl in his class his girlfriend and talked about how she was always flirting with him. He’d probably be locked up. In my mind, there is a direct link between this kind of thinking/behavior and six-year-old girls wearing sweatpants that say “JUICY” across the butt. It’s just wrong.

2. “Eating” Children. Okay, this one is pretty endemic too and I’m afraid I have some close friends and family who are guilty. The phrase “I could just eat you up” always sounded to me like a reasonable expression of cute-ness, far enough removed from any notion of actually eating children to raise an eyebrow. But somehow, for some reason, some well-meaning well-wishers having taken the concept into more literal territory. They say things like, “I could just take a bite out of those thighs,” or “I just want to sprinkle some salt all over her and gobble her up for dinner with a nice salad.” It’s almost like there’s a contest to be more literally disgusting in an effort to be the most metaphorically cute. But you know what? It’s just gross.

I anticipate that this could be a running series, so please let me know what kid-related stuff drives you crazy…