LA Zoo

The best picture of all of the kids

Posing

Nicholas and Elissa making silly faces

Watching the elephants

Stinky Flamingos

Climbing on everything!

I can't remember the last time I was this tired.  I took both kids to the zoo today while Jimmy was working.  The day started off with Nicholas falling off the chair while sitting at the table eating breakfast.  He must have fallen pretty hard because blood starting dripping onto the floor.  I was so worried that he busted a tooth or something, and he was holding his mouth and didn't want to let me see what happened.  After giving him a cold washcloth, he finally let me look, and he cut his chin open.  It didn't look that deep, so we cleaned up the blood and gave him an ice pack and some TLC.  Once we got out of the house and on the road, he was better and was looking forward to our day at the zoo.

We got there a little before they opened and met up with some of his friends.  They were both so excited to see their friends!  Well, I'm not too sure about Christopher, all he wanted to do the minute we got there was eat.  I packed a bag with snacks and he ate almost all of them in the first hour or so.  He didn't seem very interested in the animals at all.  The only ones that seemed to pique his interest were the amphibians and reptiles, but that was about it until we got to the elephants.  Nicholas was so funny though!  His friend Elissa's mom who is also one of the teacher's at his school was there, and he was running up to her after every animal we saw; calling her "Elissa's mommy".  He also kept asking to see the elephant's over and over, and when we finally got there, we only saw one elephant.  A little bit of a disappointment, but he didn't seem to care at that point.  When we went to see the lion's, the lioness was the only one to be seen.  Nicholas had asked me where the lion was and I told him he was probably sleeping.  He told me, "no, the man took him home because he was tired".  I wasn't sure what man he was talking about, maybe the zookeeper?  But it was pretty funny.  He has an answer for everything these days.

At lunch, we got lucky and were able to get all of the tables in the patio area for our group.  Nicholas fell off of the bench and hit his head hard on the ground.  I thought he had hit his head on the bricks surrounding the patio and was worried that he may have cracked open his head (he is his mother's son).  Thankfully a scraped elbow was the worst of it, and he was okay.  Poor kid!  We went to the children's zoo before calling it a day, but the petting zoo was closed and none of the other animals were really out.

I was so grateful for the other parents there that helped me with pushing the stroller, taking Nicholas to the bathroom and for keeping an eye on him.  I thought I had lost him at one point and started panicking when I couldn't see him, but he was with his friend's and one of the dad's. I was so exhausted by the end of our outing and was thankful that both kids fell asleep as soon as we started driving out of the parking lot.  I'd like to think I could do another outing on my own, but I doubt it will be anytime soon.