Terracotta soldiers followed by pasta

There is a special exhibition at the Montreal Art Gallery: Emperor Qin's terracotta soldiers. How ironic that I've been to China no less than thrice and have never seen the terracotta army, and my first glimpse of it is in Canada.

Obviously, seeing a few statues in an art museum must be nothing compared to seeing the entire unearthed army as a whole. Though, apparently, many of the soldiers have still not seen light in over 2000 years. Still, it would be amazing. I guess I'll just have to go back to China. One day.

But I digress. A terracotta soldiers exhibition is obviously not the ideal place to bring your one-year-old. Though she is incredibly patient and mild-tempered, I could not possibly have expected her to sit quietly in her stroller while we passed from room to room, looking at a series of grey statues. I'm sure she would have preferred to see big, quacking, dancing ducks (or something like that).

We had not been inside the exhibition for five minutes, and had not yet even seen one single soldier (just some vases and a drainage pipe from some palace), when my baby made it clear to me that she would not stay in her stroller one minute more without screaming. I picked her up, and for the rest of the tour, while my aunt pushed the stroller, I carried my 24 lbs. daughter in my arms. As she waived at every passing stranger, I looked at the terracotta soldiers and read the blurbs written about nearly every one of them. I figured I had better take my time, since I had paid 20$ to get in. It wasn't so bad, really. My lower back didn't hurt that much by the time I had passed through every room.

Afterwards we went to an Italian restaurant. My daughter sat in her high chair and waited patiently for her supper, passing the time by flirting with every waiter in the restaurant. These waiters were fairly cute men, and they loved smiling and waving at my baby. Who was just thrilled, naturally. When one waiter in particular began waving and winking at her, she became so excited that she grabbed (or rather, pinched) my arm as if to say: "Look mommy! He likes me he likes me!" As the waiter continued to smile at her, she pinched my arm harder and harder, until I practically yelled with pain. My aunt thought this was hysterical.