Happy Thursday

Yesterday was a good day. Charlotte and I had a mommy-daughter day. We started off with 4-year old/pre-kindergarden screening at the school district. She did wonderfully. She's a bright kid, and always has been, so I was not worried. But one of the schools we're looking at for next year requests that the kids go through the process. I think her biggest issue was squirminess. There are many days where she has a hard time sitting still. I'm not sure she makes it through a meal without hopping out of her chair a dozen times. And they tested motor skills--including skipping, gallopping, hopping, etc--second to last. She was so excited and fired up that she had to sprint a couple of laps around the room, and then had a lot of trouble staying in her seat for the final question session. All in all, though, she's in the middle of the range in all categories for a normal 5 year old, though she's barely 4.

After that, we went to the zoo. I loved it. No strollers, no bulky diaper bag, no chaos. Just two of us on a georgous day and many hours to kill. She wanted me to read all of the animal descriptions, and she got to call the shots for what all we saw and did. The butterfly house was high on her list, after receiving a Fancy Nancy book for her birthday called Bon Jour Butterfly. We got to watch as the keepers brought out and released butterflies that were freshly hatched from their cocoons, and she had a blast attempting to identify them on the laminated cards provided.

We did the childrens zoo (we even petted goats and gerbils...it isn't quite as icky when you're not freaking out about a baby eating the goat brush), we rode the train, we rode the carousel. We're members, btw--I love not having to pay a la carte for all those activities. She loves penguins, and we got a double-dose there: after touring the Penguin and Puffin Cove, we caught most of the feeding session later. While stopped in one station on the train, we got a beautiful view of the new tiger cubs at play.

When I asked her what her favorite part was, she said "everything". And she was disappointed that we couldn't see the entire zoo. We were there for 4 hours! Because she was so well behaved (only the barest hint of a whine, at 3.75 hours in, and she walked the whole way), she got to pick something from the gift shop on the way home. She fixed on a small pack of stretchy rubber frogs, and a "snake egg" that you soak in water to hatch, and then the snake "grows" in the water. Crazy kid was so excited, that the frogs went to school today for show and tell, and the head is already poking out of the snake egg. She's cheap too--both toys cost about $5 total.

I didn't get my accostumed Thursday evening solo time, and my Thursday night exercise class has been moved to Tuesdays. But, we had a nice dinner as a family (from scratch parmesan chicken that was nicely crispy if a tad overbrowned from a too-hot pan), and I took Trystan to the library to help me drop off books before bed. He loves that place and I spent several minutes chasing him through the shelves, and picking up random books that he pulled down. He loves to climb on the floor cusions in the kiddie section, and take books from the shelves to sit and flip through (sometimes not so gently...but he's learning). The kids books he "chose" got checked out for home (it's as good of a system for finding new books as any...), and I managed to snag two for myself in between aisle dashes.

Char even fell asleep by 9pm, instead of 10 or later last night, after her normal protest about "not being tired." I think she was snoring 30 second after I left the room. I only lasted till 10 because I was reading....