My Little (and Dirty) Scaredy Cat

July 13, 2009allisonbarton 10 Comments

Alex is such a scaredy cat. There have been the rare occurrences that include him going down a slide, but for the most part slides seem to scare him quite a bit.

Our trip to the Zoo with some lovely Burgh Moms on Saturday was a blast. How could it not be? Four kids between 20 months and just over 3? Awesome.

Seriously.

There were a few meltdowns, but considering how long we were there the kids were fabulous.

And, of course, Alex was the only kid who wouldn’t go anywhere near the slide. When Kelly offered to even go down the slide with him, Alex screamed “NO!” He really, really, didn’t want to go down the slide. But the other kids had a blast climbing up the incline and then going down it, fortunately never managing to kick my likes-to-stand-and-sit-on-the-end-of-the-slide kid in the face. (Or maybe Burgh Baby is right: When he does get kicked in the face he’ll finally learn.)

Instead of playing at the playground by, you know, playing with the playground equipment, Alex decided that the mulch was much more fun. He ended up getting a bit dirty (this picture doesn’t quite show the fact that he not only tried to eat the mulch, but he also made a shampoo out of it). But he was thoroughly enjoying himself, and for the most part was distracted from entering the tunnel maze that I was convinced he was going to get lost in. No way could my smaller-than-it-used-to-be-but-still-big butt fit in there.

And what would a day to the zoo with four young kids be without a group shot?

This day made me happy. The cuteness alone was enough, but being able to spend some time with some awesome Burgh Moms made it even better. Even if most of that time we were distracted by chasing our children.

The Best Time

March 23, 2009allisonbarton 5 Comments

Did you know that the absolute best time to go to the zoo is when they are closing?

With Zach’s parents in town for a long weekend, we decided that Sunday would be a perfect zoo day. Even though it was my third time in about a month, I was still super excited. I absolutely love taking pictures of the animals, and feel that every time I go I get some amazing shots.

We arrived an hour and a half before closing, which is only thirty minutes before they stop letting people in. As we entered, there were hoards of people exiting. While everyone was leaving, there were only a very small number of people entering, so we ended up having the zoo practically to ourselves.

Spending as much time as you want in front of every animal without having to worry about blocking a 4 foot tall person’s sight? Is awesome. When you get to wait around just watching animals, you don’t miss all of the cool stuff that they do:

We were also lucky enough to have the opportunity to watch the trainers with the elephants. They were marched around in circles and told to do various things, all while the baby elephant was just running around getting in the way.

Of course, we also saw a lot of “meows,” which may actually be graduating to a “rawr!” title.

The only downside to entering so late is that we weren’t able to go into the aquarium, and all of the people that were still in the zoo twenty minutes after close were told to leave, twice, over the loudspeakers.

While I was happy to get some great shots of the animals, the best shot of the day, naturally, was an Alex picture.

You Can Learn A Lot At The Zoo

March 8, 2009March 8, 2009allisonbarton 8 Comments

When Alex and I went to the zoo a few days ago, he taught me a lot of things.

This here guy? He is a “meow!”:

Oh, and this guy? Just another “tweet tweet tweet!”

I knew before we got there that the monkeys would make Alex happy. Every single monkey he saw needed to be recognized. “Eee aah! Eee aah!” And let me tell you, there are a lot of monkeys. Most of them were running around, swinging, jumping, climbing everything they could and picking bugs out of another monkey’s fur. The gorillas were a little lazy, though:

As we were leaving the monkeys I was told “mo! Mo eee aah!” a few times, until we caught sight of another “tweet tweet tweet.” The lovely peacocks that roam the zoo, and, as Alex taught me, always lead you to good places. His insistence that we follow the peacock led us right to lunch.

My biggest lesson of the day didn’t come until later that night when we were home. Alex successfully learned how to climb up his parental units just like the monkeys do.