Monkeying Around

Saturday was the first time in a long time that we had nowhere to go and nothing to do. There's always housework, but nothing pressing. So we went to the zoo. I'd share photos, but that would require us to have remembered the camera.

We tried to go early, to beat the heat. It sort of worked. The humidity was immune to our beatings, however. Maybe next time I'll walk around with a million of those "silica gel" packets stapled to my shirt.

On the spur of the moment, we called friends who have kids the same ages as our ownMr. Friend was able to join us with his boys, though his wife was busy. They have one of those nifty strollers with an extra sit/stand jumpseat on the back for their preschooler to ride on. Charlotte loved it. She kept squeezing in, so it frequently looked like our friend had 3 kids and we had 1.

Saturdays at the zoo are, well, a zoo. People, people everywhere. They're actually one of the main exhibits as some of them smell only slightly better than the elephants. We tried to stick to indoor exhibits--the reptile and mammal houses, the penguins. I still have never seen a sea lion show. One of these days.

I was impressed at how attentive Trystan was all morning. It's been several months since we were there last, so he's never paid much attention to the animals before. Saturday he was smiling and pointing and enjoying the show. He said "dog" and pointed at the prairie dogs, and loved to watch the penguins diving and splashing. We took a train ride shortly before we left, and he did not enjoy that at all. Kept trying to get off at every stop (we rode the complete circle all at once).

I had thought that spending over five hours outside in the sun would exhaust both kids, but those strollers worked too well. Trystan slept for about 45 minutes in his stroller at lunch time, and Charlotte fought sleeping until several hours after we got home. They were both crabby (as were we). But it was fun.