Week 116

May 18-24

This past week we had a nice zoo date with lots of friends!!! I am so lucky to have friends where I work...who have kids my age...and are all knocked up like me. :) Haha! It's really nice to hang out with people who totally get it when you are in the middle of a conversation and have to interrupt it briefly to run after your 2 year old. People who also smuggle snacks and juice cups into places. People who understand why you wear big sunglasses because you rarely have time to put on full makeup. Moms.

All of these girls are amazing and I am grateful that we can confide in one another about how hard it is to potty train...silly side effects of pregnancy...how to communicate in your marriage...and of course complaining about work. LOL.

Okay so now I am rambling. Back to my post about the zoo. We had 6 kids and 6 moms this particular day. It was our typical zoo day where we spent the early part of the morning walking around and looking at animals. We stopped by the giraffes and had a snack...waited for them patiently and only saw a couple. There is a new baby giraffe that is apparently 10 weeks old and SUPER cute but I haven't gotten to see him yet. Hopefully soon though.

We stopped by to feed our bird friends. That is by far Jack's favorite thing to do at the zoo. He runs right up to the counter with his money and picks the popsicle stick with the most amount of bird seed on it. Hilarious! He holds out the stick and goes, "come here bird!" I am impressed at how well he holds the stick and his entire arm very still so the bird can jump up on him if it wants to. He is not scared of them at all.

I have to mention something that happened at the zoo because it really bothered me. There was a class on a field trip. The kids looked like they were probably in kindergarten, maybe first grade and they kept coming up to Jack (who is 2 years old) and asking him for his bird food. Their "chaperones" were nowhere in sight. I told this one little girl that this was his food...but she could go up to the counter and buy her own for $1. She twirled around and put her hand on her hip and said (with quite the attitude), "I don't have any money!" I seriously wanted to find her chaperone and chew her out but we were really having a nice time and I didn't feel like causing a scene so I just said, "well that's too bad for you then," and moved Jack away from her.

Two things bothered me...number one was the fact that young children were on a field trip at the zoo basically unsupervised. What kind of school was this? I am glad I'm a nurse and only work 3 days a week because I can tell you right now that based on this experience I will be one of the parent chaperones for my kids school field trips. I mean there was no one in site. Not only were these kids basically misbehaving, but more importantly someone could have swiped them right out of there and they would be gone forever. SCARY!!

The second thing that bothered me was that a girl much older than my kid was trying to take something from him and when I basically stopped her she got attitude with me. I know this sounds kind of mean and it is really hard to describe how she acted towards me...like I had no right to tell her she couldn't take something from my child. She seemed smug like she thought she was entitled to it. It really got under my skin. I am so sick of kids these days who just think that everything should be given to them at no price. You have to WORK HARD for things. Obviously their parents are not teaching them these lessons.

So after the animals we all went to the water park. Thank goodness they have that at the zoo, because it gets HOT in Florida! It is only May and we are already in the 90's during the day. The cold water felt soooooo good after walking around the hot zoo all morning. The kids had a blast as usual. We just let them all run around and play. It was great! After the zoo some of us parted ways. Jack and I had lunch with Madilynn and Andrea at Chick-fil-a (or as Madilynn calls it "Chick-ray"). We usually ride together since they live down the street. After lunch we went back home and it was definitely nap time! Jack slept and I think I slept that day too because a full morning of kid chasing makes you sleepy!!!!

I wanted to include a quick Jack update. His PR rash is still with us...but getting much better. You can kind of see it in some of the pictures. The pediatrician warned us that it could last up to 14 weeks so we have a ways to go. It doesn't bother him though and you would never even notice it unless you take off his shirt.

He is talking more and more in full sentences. He says the FUNNIEST things! The morning of the zoo trip I was telling him about how we were going to pick up Madilynn in our car and go to the zoo and then go swimming. He got super excited and started babbling about "Mad-lynn" and "babing shoop" (bathing suit). This kid loves the water and any excuse to put on his babing shoop he is ready to go!

Another cute thing he does is now that my belly is growing he is starting to understand the whole "baby in the belly" concept. He says "mine baby" and gives it a kiss. EVERY time we ask him if the baby is a girl or a boy he says "girl". I'm talking every, single time. Sometimes we even emphasize boy or girl to trick him...he still says girl. Interesting. Everyone else thinks it's a boy. We will see if Jack was right.

He love, love, loves to read books. We read all the time. He is starting to get into the Dr Seuss books, which delights me because they are fun to read and they are certainly entertaining. He will sit through the whole "Cat in the Hat" and thinks it's funny that things rhyme. I am quite impressed because that is a fairly long story and he will listen to the entire thing. He still doesn't watch too much TV, but he likes "Little Bear" and "Little Bill" on Nick Junior. He is over Oswald and Wonder Pets...fine with me because I'm sick of all those episodes over and over again. :) His favorite movies are "Monsters Inc" and he still likes "Toy Story" every once in awhile. He is also into the old "Donald Duck" cartoons. We have them all on DVD because that is Ed's favorite Disney character and he bought the collection years ago for himself. Great investment because Jack watches them all the time. I love classic cartoons. They are so simple and wonderful!

Well, that is all I have for now! Hope you enjoyed stories from our little corner of the world. See you next week! :)