Annual Spring Trip to the Zoo

I don’t know if you can call two years in a row annual, but like last year, we did trek to the zoo with mom, Lilly my friend Julie and her 3 yet again this year during spring break.  Like last year it was an amazingly beautiful day weather wise and we had a great time.  I figured Kyle would be the bellyacher, but with his new found reading skills, he had a great time reading signs and telling us random animal facts.  The downside was that since he could read signs, we couldn’t’ use the “oh, there’s nothing down that trail, just bathrooms line when we were tired and didn’t feel like making one more loop to see another set of monkeys.  I even let him man the camera (the small digital, not my big expensive one that didn’t even make it out of the house with us because if I took it somewhere with all three kids I would end up losing one of the kids because I was so worried about keeping track of the camera) and he did a great job.  The picture of Ryan that Kyle took captures one of the last outings with his “me”.  We (we meaning Jason) finally got serious about ditching the binky during all but bed and nap time.  It won’t lie, it was a pretty hellacious week.  Ryan directed most of his frustration at me and I sent the lion’s share of that frustration straight at Jason, but we survived and now that is over I am glad to have one last visible parenting hurdle no longer hanging over my head.  An upside is that I think Ryan now looks forward to bedtime, he will come to me around 8 or 8:30 and say “Iwannarock”, then run in his room, reach between the slats of his crib to retrieve his long lost friend and then go sit in the rocking chair and wait for me.  Back to the zoo, Ryan is just the perfect age and loved it, so proud to identify all of the animals and other things we ran across (BIRD! BIRD! BIRD! WATER! TREE!).  If he didn’t recognize the contents of the exhibit, he would just say “ANIMAL!  ANIMAL!”  Grant spent most of his time saying everything was boring, which he says about anything he doesn’t like (these “peas” are so boring) which seems like anything that does not involve the TV.  I know it is just a phase and things will get easier soon.