Better Late Than Never

In June, I downloaded a few photos and wrote only four sentences before I needed to turn the computer off and head home for a visit with my family. Afterward, I forgot all about this blog entry and never posted it.

This morning I finally finished writing the entry. Here it is... originally from early June:


Okay, so this picture has nothing to do with the stuff I'm posting about today, but I just had to share. In my unbiased opinion, it's cute on so many levels.

I need to make this a quick post; this morning we're leaving for a car trip to see my "littlest" brother at Chippie's house and again at Nonny's.

Yesterday we went to the zoo to spend some quality time together. The day was beautiful and perfect for watching animals. Before getting to the zoo, we stopped at a neighborhood carry-out to get bottled water. Oo took a long look at the store and said...
Oo: That place is for DJs.
Me: Yeah? How do you know it's for DJs?
Oo: Because the last time we drove by, there were DJs coming out.
Me: How did you know they were DJs?
Oo: Because they were wearing necklaces and black shirts, and they had their hats on backwards.
(Sounds plausible to me.)

Last summer the zoo had a dinosaur exhibit that scared the pants off of Oo (it had life-sized robotic dinosaurs that growl and spit). But when Oo heard that the exhibit was at the zoo again this summer, she said she HAD TO go see it because it was her FAVORITE thing at the zoo.

At the main zoo gate, we were each inked with a dinosaur stamp on the back of our hands so we'd be permitted into the special exhibit. The stamp was enough to get Oo over-the-edge excited, but T had a different perspective as he stared at the blue dinosaur on his hand...
T: I want dinosaur OUT! It's stuck!


The kids had fun seeing the dinosaurs, but our trip to the zoo was during T's naptime. He's been slowly weaning himself off naps, and we figured that seeing the animals would ward off any sleepiness. Well, we were wrong. As we pulled him around in the wagon he became less and less interested in animals. Soon he was completely crabby and miserable. At the mere mention of monkeys, however, he perked up.

Our zoo is horribly spread out. To see the monkeys, you have to make a long trek uphill. It's quite a schlep, and there are no animals to see on the way. By the time we made it to the monkey house, T had reached his limit. To our dismay, the first few "cages" were monkeyless, and the empty cages sent him flying off the deep end. He threw himself down on the floor—arms flailing, feet kicking—and began screaming, "I NEED monkeys!"

After Adrian and I had a quick chuckle at T's expense, I scooped up T, tucked him under my arm like a football and ran through the monkey house looking for a monkey. Some of the monkeys I showed him were apparently not monkey-ish enough, prompting T to repeatedly scream "NO! Not a monkey!" The picture below documents the glorious moment when we finally found a monkey that was satisfactory.


After the monkey house, we ran back down the hill and all the way back to our car. T fell asleep on the ride home and again once we got him in the house. The pic below perfectly captures his exhaustion.


Lesson learned: Never assume naptime can be intruded upon by anything other than monkeys.