Zoo Trip

I've been having some guilt lately that Maddex is missing out on fun anytime that I'm off. It's not easy to get out with the twins, so we mostly stay at home. When we're home, I feel so busy feeding babies, putting babies down, calming babies, making food, cleaning dishes, doing laundry, and so on and so forth that I don't spend enough time playing with Maddex or organizing activities for her. I don't doubt that she enjoys her days at home - she plays with the babies, talks to us, watches a couple shows, plays with her dolls, and acts silly all around the house. Still, I wanted to get out and do at least one fun thing with big sis over my break! I'm not sure why I decided to go to the zoo, but the zoo it was!

Wednesday morning turned out to be a bit cold and blustery, but I refused to be deterred. We got loaded up and headed to pick up Nana. Thankfully, Nana is brave because I couldn't handle these trips by myself! (Sidenote: during the trip, we decided it probably would have been a good idea to have a third adult!). We finally made it out to the zoo around 11:00 AM. We checked out some noisy monkeys, lazy tigers, and made a beeline for the playground. Maddex loooooooved the playground but was a little reserved about the big playthings! She ran around and did a little climbing while Nana followed behind and applauded all of her two year old playground accomplishments. I took the opportunity to feed and change the twins and did a little applauding from a distance. I did manage to snap a few sweet pictures of Maddex playing. This was probably her favorite part of the trip. We should have just gone to a park.

Next was lunch. Yum. I have great things to say about zoo hamburgers. Here's where a 3rd adult would have come in handy - 2 adults + 2 strollers = 0 hands to hold a tray of food! I abandoned the twins momentarily to grab the food & drinks. We ate happily and took a bathroom break. As usual at the BR Zoo, there were peacocks wandering around the food area. Maddex made me chuckle when she was calling "Hey pretty bird, come here, come here!" as we walked to the bathroom. Leaving the bathroom resulted in a meltdown because she wanted a diaper change on the nasty plastic table. She won. I covered that thing in paper towels. Gross.

Annyyyyyway. We headed off again. Oh, I forgot to mention that the twins were screaming during most of lunch...they were tired and didn't seem to want to fall asleep in the stroller. They had no choice. We spent the next hour or so discovering animals throughout the zoo. They really should make that place a little more stroller friendly. I often had to lift Maddex's stroller up so that she could see the animals. At one point during the trip she repeatedly informed me, "Mama, alligators bite hard" after she overheard a boy telling his mom the same fact. Maddox the parrot. My favorite was the building with the fish and snakes because she could see them close up, on her level. Emerging from said building led to the end of our trip. By this time, the baby twins had minimal sleep and were not happy about being in the stroller any longer. I eventually took Harper out and held her while pushing a stroller (insert adult #3 here to hold crying baby or push stroller). We traversed the long walk back to the car, spent what seemed like 20 minutes loading up, and headed home. All kids were asleep within a few minute. Trip = successful. I'm glad we went, but you can bet I won't be doing that again soon :)

That night Mitch asked Maddex about the zoo. He asked her about the different animals we saw. She confirmed that we saw monkeys and tigers and volunteered that we saw birds. She also said we saw pigs. We didn't see any pigs. Stop! Picture time!