Zoo Adventures

In October, we also braved the traffic to San Diego and took the kiddos to the zoo. It is one of our favorite adventure spots. Every time we go it’s more fun as Ben gets older. Emma was actually awake for a lot of it (that’s a double-edged sword). And of course I brought the fun camera and took what I think are some quality photographs, if I do say so myself. Ben insisted on bringing his binoculars, which made me nervous because he loves them and I didn’t want them to get lost. But it ended up being a big part of the day. He loved looking through them at all the animals, and being the official “Finder.” He also spent a lot of time looking at the map and planning our routes. He’s a regular Diego, this one. Once we went through the big cats area, he was a tiger for the rest of the day. It was particularly entertaining at lunch when he growled at everyone sitting around us. Fortunately they were able to see past his very good impression, and they seemed to understand that he was not, in fact, a real tiger. But he was very convincing. I dressed Miss Emma in an adorable little giraffe onesie with matching pants and sweatshirt that I got from a student. Of course I forgot to give her her medication before we left, so of course she was barfing all over it all day. And of course she had an enormous blow-out while we were on the sky tram, which, since she was in disposables for the day, leaked all over through her pants and my skirt—freaking disposables. It took me 20 minutes to clean her up. I was really bummed because I love the shirt. But by some miracle of God the poop missed the shirt and concentrated on the pants. I don’t know how it happened, but it did, so she was able to wear her giraffe all day, and we saved an outfit. At the end of the day she stank horribly of spit-up and poop, but she still looked crazy cute. And the binoculars never left the Finder’s neck, so no loss there either. I’d call that a success.