It’s not the destination. It’s how you get there.

Last week I chaperoned an outing that Mimi’s daycare center organized. We took a group of kids to Kidspace, a fantastic children’s museum and park near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. At first, Mimi was a bit reticent. The kids’ museum houses a bunch of climbing structures that are somewhat complex and very tall, and as the youngest kid in the group she wasn’t able to run up and down and climb all over the place with the other kids. But with a little encouragement she followed them around and climbed onto the lower levels of some of the structures. On each try, she would make it to the lowest level, look up, look around, look at me, and then slide back on the ground and walk to something else to try out…

And when she saw the little tricycles outside, she went bananas. She hopped on one, let me put the helmet on her and though her feet couldn’t reach the pedals, she still pushed herself along the track. She got off one tricycle, got on another and did it all over again. I occasionally pushed or pulled her along, and though I tried to put her feet on the pedals, she seemed quite happy to just hold her feet up and let me push her while she steered. At first I was trying to follow the arrows on the track but that proved pointless with Mimi behind the wheel; we bumped into some benches and other obstacles. The whole time she was laughing and ooh-ing and aaah-ing as we moved along.

And that’s when it hit me: it didn’t matter that we were going in the wrong direction on the track or that we didn’t start from the Start Line or even make it to the Finish line. That little kid was having a grand time.

Tagged as: california, children, daycare, kidspace, pasadena, rose bowl