Try it and see

I wasn't sure how many times I was going to go to the zoo before the inevitable happened: the babies not being content in the stroller.

I've been wondering about this moment for a long time. Would it be easy? Would we all be in tears by the end? I haven't known.

I consider myself a reasonably disorganized person in every way except for one: strategy. Wherever we go, we (meaning my kids and I) formulatee a careful plan involving the best way to interface with the location.

 We have to, or we can't go. The ratio of little kids to grown ups doesn't look right for our group if people are crying. I get bad looks, and heaven forbid, more comments. Especially in the area of the world where we live, which I recently learned is ranked one of the least family friendly areas in the nation.

In most stores, SA gets doors, Cupcake tucks in behind the stroller to go through them. SA hold the right rail of the stroller, Cupcake the right. They do a great job being very obedient. Each of them entertains the baby next to them. If something falls, someone quickly picks it up. Getting into and out of the car there is a while order. It exists as a whole system that we all know has to work, or we have to leave. (You only actually have to really leave once or maybe twice before your kids understand whats hanging in the balance of their obedience. I do it that way bc I hate getting "mad" at children. I just won't do it. Especially not in public.) Anyway, the whole system works because the babies stay in the stroller.

And now, they are ready to walk a little. And yesterday the big kids wanted to go to the zoo, and so did I. So we just decided to make the day the first penguin in the water, and see what happened.

For those who are acquainted with the locale: we devised a plan. Giraffes only on the upper side, then backtrack to tigers, monkeys, proceed to lower zoo. Forget the elephants. We voted on this in the car.

Twice we hit a major destination and let the babies out for a while to gape, mouths open, at the spectacles of huge animals. Can you remember the first time you saw a giraffe? The reactions we got from the little girls were adorable. It was really fun. No one but Mrs. ran away. We had predicted this, and SA was the runner.

Here she is just before the first giggling, shrieking, desertion.

Then, on our windings through the lower zoo people got hungry. We, for the first time in our billions of almost weekly zoo trips did something we have never thought of before. We pulled to the left into that enormous field next to the tortoises, and decided to just forget about the rest and just play. (really what was going on was that SA had brought a handful of change from the gift shop, and was having a hard time walking further and further away from it.) So we had our picnic, and played in the gorgeous sun, and had a ball. And then we headed back.

 

Perfect. Forget total immersion as that first penguin. We decided to tiptoe in.

After all, who doesn't love a good gift shop?

Here we are starting our lunch. You can see SA is delighted that we've decided to amputate half the zoo day in favor of playing on the grass, and spending quarters.

So, in answer to my initial mental question: How hard is it to take the four to the zoo, with babies semi walking. I'm not that sure. We didn't do the whole thing. But for as far as we got, pretty fun. Try it and see. :)