To moms, it ought to be the C’mon Museum

He isn’t exactly quotable, that boy of mine, the one turning 6 today.

I brought him along not to quote him, but to see something new through his eyes.

Anyway, if I quoted him accurately, you wouldn’t get much beyond a breathless, “Gosh, Mom, look … Mom, c’mon!” (Yes, I actually did write this stuff down verbatim.)

On my first visit to the long-awaited Imagine Children’s Museum in downtown Everett, I didn’t want to go alone.

I didn’t want to interview the museum’s executive director, Nancy Johnson. I didn’t want to talk with the hundreds of donors and volunteers who made a dream come true at 1502 Wall St., where a working replica of the Mukilteo Lighthouse invites kids inside.

I wanted to bring a child along – my child.

Since becoming a mom in 1983, I’ve visited many extraordinary places for children, from the Pacific Science Center in Seattle to Dinosaur National Monument in the middle of nowhere on the Utah-Colorado border – oh, the places we’ll drive for our kids.

Never have I seen a child so excited as my kindergartner when he came bursting through the Imagine museum gate Tuesday.

First, he made a beeline for the treehouse, a lookout over the entire, colorful scene.

In the rush to follow him up the tree, I didn’t miss “The Schacks” painted in white lettering on the trunk, and a sweet little heart with the initials “J+I” inside it. The late John Schack and his wife, Idamae, Everett philanthropists, donated $1 million to buy the building.

Such telling details were lost on my boy, who was more interested in coaxing me across the wooden bridge, racing down the treehouse steps and running into a mock jetliner, the 7CM7.

Inside the plane, he tried out airliner seats while waiting his turn to buckle into one of two pilot seats – it took awhile for the girl pilots to tire of takeoffs and landings.

He needs more practice negotiating the horizontal climbing wall. That’s a good sign. The museum has much to keep older kids growing and learning.

He weighed fruits and vegetables and climbed into a saddle and atop a tractor in the farm exhibit. I noticed it was only the mothers putting plastic bananas, apples, broccoli and carrots back into their proper bins.

Inside the H2O Discovery, a ferry painted white and green like the real thing, he found a school buddy to help him shoot water guns and make whirlpools and bubbles. They weren’t completely soaked, but I appreciated a hand dryer on the wall.

In the minitheater, he threw on a cape and hammed it up, while his pal worked stage lights and pushed buttons for sound effects.

It was my son the doctor (well, the veterinarian) in a white coat in the child-size wildlife clinic. Children took stuffed critters – a bat, a bald eagle, a beaver, a wolf and more – from cages and treated them with bandages, shots and all manner of medicine. They took real care peering at X-rays and washing animals in a waterless sink.

The world of work is also replicated at the Ribbons Cafe, where my boy the short-order cook served me a tasty plastic burger.

We tried to see it all and do it all before closing time, but couldn’t because each stop held his interest. We didn’t do justice to a reflections cave, a weather forecasting station or the bank – my kid seems to prefer selling theater tickets to being a banker, so I have doubts about his earning potential.

We’ll be back to try some building in the construction studio on the lower level.

I have one complaint, the smallest thing. The main exit is through the gift shop, not what parents want when kids are tired or just spoiled. The museum could take a tip from the Woodland Park Zoo and other children’s venues and make the store an optional stop.

What impressed me most was seeing real play, the let’s pretend, dress-up kind I remember. True, we didn’t need to pay $5 to get into my grandmother’s basement back then and sit on her real saddle or try on cowboy clothes from her cedar chest.

But it’s a small price for the wonders inside the Imagine museum. The greatest wonder is to see your child being a child. In these times, that’s not a given.

I’ll quote him one more time: “C’mon, let’s go.”

I know he’s only 6, but you really ought to take his advice.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com