By Wendy Perrin

If you live in Washington, D.C., you have one day left to attend this year's Museum Shop Around at the Strathmore Mansion. It's a nifty idea: 19 museums in the D.C. area bring the unique merchandise from their gift shops to one central location and set up shop. Today I found art books and apparel from the Corcoran Gallery, music-oriented toys and books from the Kennedy Center, funky scarves and mittens from the Textile Museum, train games from the B&O Railroad Museum, political books from the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, cool necklaces from the Bead Museum, contemporary gadgets from the National Building Museum, amber jewelry from the Hillwood Museum & Gardens, holiday knick-knacks from the National Museum of Women in the Arts . . . . And I managed to get all my Christmas shopping done in an hour and a half!

By Wendy Perrin

En route to Washington, D.C.--where Tim and the kids and I are visiting friends this weekend--we discovered Port Discovery, the children's museum in Baltimore. It's easy to reach off I-95, and boy was it an excellent mid-drive pitstop.  We ended up spending 4 hours there . . . and hated to leave!  Whoever designed this museum had restless, athletic young boys in mind.  There are countless ways to work off random excess energy, what with three stories filled with contraptions for climbing on, crawling through, jumping in, running around, sliding down, and pulling yourself up in.

Doug, 2, on a rope bridge 3 stories high. Charlie, 4, on Clifford the Big Red Dog's conveyor belt.

Tim remarked that this kids' museum really should be called a Daddy Museum.  There are no weight or height limits for the equipment, which means Dads get to climb and pull and jump too.