Zoobilee

Today was a beautiful day -- low 80s and low humidity. The kids went to school for just two hours this morning. Bryn had her first swim lesson at school, and Luke had a much better day than last Thursday. The teachers said he was fine after snack, which was a half hour after I had dropped him off, so I joked that they just needed to feed him. After Luke's nap, we went to the zoo, which wasn't terribly crowded. This may have been the first time that I've attempted such a big outing with both kids on my own; in the past, if Ken wasn't available, I had brought along one of our babysitters as an extra set of hands. I wouldn't necessarily say things are getting a whole lot easier -- Bryn rode in the stroller more than Luke did, which meant I was often carrying Luke with one arm and pushing Bryn with the other, but my confidence seems to be building.

One of the first things we saw was a mother duck and eight tiny ducklings in a small pond. (Incidentally, the goslings at Haverford College now look like teenagers! Only their necks and heads are still yellowish and fuzzy as they were when I first saw them a few weeks ago.) We headed toward the children's section of the zoo as Bryn was eager to brush the goats. Some of the goats' bellies are really swollen, and I learned from one of the zoo staff that goats have four stomachs (!), and their abdomens regularly swell and contract. Next the kids went on short pony rides. I didn't realize that I wasn't allowed to walk alongside Luke until he was already on a horse, but he did better than I had expected in being distanced from me as he rode around in a circle. In this same area of the zoo there's a large tractor, which I had never noticed before. My guess is that playing on the tractor was Luke's favorite part of his zoo visit. From there we went for the first time into the small mammal house where we saw an active sloth and two aardvarks asleep on top of each other. But where the kids really ran around, squealing, was in the nearly empty reptile house. On the way home, Bryn said her favorite animal of the day was the green skink that we saw eating a tossed salad. As we were on our way out, I treated the kids to a blue raspberry icee, and it turned everyone's lips and tongues blue. Yum. Tomorrow will be the first time that I try taking Luke to school -- for the morning, anyway, and keeping Bryn home with me. I'm not completely sure of our plans, but I suspect we'll find ourselves eating lunch out. :)