Sophie at the Louvre

Sophie and I went to the Louvre today and spent more time than ever before looking at art!
Here are some pics from last time:

Sophie is getting a good view of the gallery.

Sophie sitting in the docent's chair!

Us with the horse picture Sophie seemed to like.

And she really liked this big animal painting above the door!

We've generally spent a lot of time playing in the open space of the sculpture gallery, but this time I had some grander ambitions.  We were going to wander the galleries and look at art and artifacts for a really long time.  That was really the extent of my ambition.  Basically, I didn't want to retreat to the sculpture gallery.  Sculptures are all well and good, but this girl is getting bored of these ones.

So we started out in the Napoleon III-style rooms, which are full of period furnishings, quite lavish.  All the old stuff is sharing space with some modern art by Wim Devoye, a rather irreverent guy who apparently likes tattooing pigs.  I like his gothic-inspired stuff, like this nautilus thing:

Not my pic, but this is the Nautilus in situ at the Louvre

Sophie is a very good museum goer.  She is quite quiet in general so she doesn't cause much fuss except when she wants to test the echo in a room.  Unfortunately, galleries in museums tend to be very interesting acoustically, so she will often burst out with a "DA!" or two in a new room.  She took my hand and walked through the furnished rooms, touching the velvet ropes and craning her head to see the ceiling and waving at people.  Then we went to the Northern European paintings gallery (my favorite) and we took some super cute pictures on the benches:

And then she fell off the bench, flat on her face.  

Yup, she lost her balance and fell forward, and her noggin hit the floor before I could catch her!  A lady walking past did the same instinctual jerky motion towards her, but the damage was done.  Poor Sophie!  She SCREAMED!  I scooped her up and held her close and took her to the elevator alcove, where her crying wouldn't echo quite as much.  She calmed down pretty quickly, actually, once I took out the bottle.  She's a tough cookie.  And in less than five minutes we were walking through the gallery again!  I was determined that we wouldn't slink away, ashamed for crying in a museum.  And lo and behold, no one said a word to us!  Babies in museums CAN be done!  And here we are, happy again:

I love this pic :)

We explored some of the Middle Eastern art, too, and Sophie fell in love with this lion:

We were so cultured today!  

Then we went outside and were healthy by eating an apple. 

 Healthy AND cultured.  Man, I'm a good nanny*.

*Briefly overlooking the huge bruise on her head...