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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Warning: long mommy-blog type post ahead

I decided that we should "do something fun" last weekend, as I was about to start a new job with a horrific commute, and I had a brand new refill on my painkillers. This idea to "do something fun" is usually my undoing, but beforehand it always sounds like a great idea. Yet somehow I never learn.

This time my "do something fun" idea was to visit the Woodland Park Zoo, as I'd recently seen an ad on television stating that they had a batch of brand new penguins. And I'm a sucker for penguins. Plus, Xander loves Pingu, so of course he must love live penguins, too, right? Even if Pingu doesn't really look so much like a penguin, lives in an igloo with indoor plumbing, and hits his sister.

Anyway, we didn't get out of the house until after lunch, which was admittedly my fault. I just couldn't get my ass in gear to shower and get dressed. But we'd decided to forego Xander's usual afternoon nap so that he'd be tired by bedtime as he was going to have to get back into his daycare schedule of going to bed at 7.30-8pm and getting up at 6.30am. Hopefully with a minimum of screaming and whining. So leaving at what was usually his nap time was the plan.

So after we drove around the various zoo parking lots for 45 minutes trying to find a space, stalking zoo patrons encumbered with six ice cream-covered, snot-filled kids and strollers wider than my car, and asking each other "are they leaving or are they going into the zoo?", we finally found a spot and to the tune of "get down! get down!" we removed Xander from his car seat, plonked him in his stroller (which we really only use these days for situations in which he'd suddenly decide he doesn't want to walk anymore and we're forced to carry him on a mini-Bataan Death March (too soon?) for 10 miles back to the car) and gave the cashier the equivalent of a car payment to get into the zoo. [Holy crap, is that the mother of all run-on sentences, or what?]

And there, the fun stops. And it was only fun so far because Xander had slept nearly the entire way in the car (so much for skipping his nap.) We headed towards the penguins first, because that was really the main reason we were there. Plus they were closest to the entrance.

Xander really did enjoy the penguins, but it was difficult to get close because apparently every other parent and child in King County had decided en masse to visit the penguins at that exact moment. So Rob took him out of the stroller and carried him over to wedge a space between some other grubby children to look at the penguins swimming happily about their new habitat.

It was quite a distance between the penguins and the next exhibit and rather than drag Xander by one arm, legs dangling uselessly and mouth screaming, we decided to put him back into his stroller so we could leave the zoo sometime before the end of the world. But of course he didn't want to get back into the stroller. "Do you want to walk?" "NO!" Ok. So he doesn't want to walk. He doesn't want to be in the stroller. What does he want to do? He wants to be carried. Through the entire zoo.

At that point I had a sudden glimpse of Xander's high school graduation where he'd still be in diapers and had to have his daddy carry him up to the podium to get his diploma, because why would he use his own legs when he can get someone to carry him? And then he took up his job as chief fry-maker at McDonald's and made himself cozy in our basement for the rest of his life.

Anyway. It pretty much went on like this for the rest of the day. He wants to be in the stroller. He wants to walk. He wants to be carried. And god help you if you don't react to his demands quickly enough, because even the monkeys stopped their shrieking momentarily to stare out at the creature that was so much louder and shriller than they were.

Lesson learned last weekend: if I want to go look at penguins, leave Xander with a babysitter so I can enjoy the zoo in peace. I've found that a lot of kid-oriented activities are so much better without the kids.

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