I actually did not realize this until after I visited today, but the Brooklyn Children’s Museum is the world’s first children’s museum. I booked a visit via Culture Pass, which gets me and three guests free access to the museum — that’s a $30 value for both Pookster and me, so I’d say it’s a pretty good deal.

I organized a visit here with my friend, his wife, and their toddler daughter who is about eight months younger than Kaia. After this visit, I can definitively say that the Brooklyn Children’s Museum is much better than the Manhattan Children’s Museum. And I love that the museum tries to incorporate local residents, local businesses, and local history and neighborhood facts into the different exhibits and play areas. There’s an entire area called World Brooklyn that models different shops, from a Mexican panaderia (bread shop) to even a mini version of L&B Spumoni Garden, a popular pizza/ice cream shop in Brooklyn. Of course, Kaia loved all the supermarket, food, and grocery sections, plus the “air maze” where you can stick in different light-weight balls and scarves into tubes, and they get pushed out with air and fly out another side. But I’d say that her absolute favorite was the fake MTA bus. She loved steering the wheel. And clearly all the other kids of many ages love it, too, because kids were constantly waiting to get a chance to “drive the bus.”

It’s nice to visit these children’s museums with Pookster because I know she will always have something that will engage her, and I don’t need to be 100 percent hands on since she will get excited and enthralled by something she finds herself, especially at her age. I also don’t need to have a hawk’s eye on her since it’s a safe space, and there’s no risk of her getting run over by a car or taken by some creep.

She was certainly comfortable here. She even had a blowout. It’s a good thing that I not only had a change of clothing for her, but also a wet bag to contain the damaged shorts.