The girls have not been out of the house since we returned to Madison on Tuesday. Yes, we've been terribly negligent parents. Wednesday was a day to unpack and recover from the drive. Thursday was my day of shopping and errands. Yesterday I went to a MOMS Club meeting without the girls because they were cranky with the sniffles.
Then, yesterday afternoon, I spent 3½ hours at Midas to get our car's brakes worked on. I went in to check a squeaky fan belt, get an oil change, and oh, by the way, the brakes feel funny. Turns out the pads and shoes were practically welded to the drums, so much that the mechanic need to pry them apart with a crowbar. Apparently that's not good! There was no free play between the supposed-to-be moving parts, and thus there was no significant difference between braking and not braking. The hardware had to be replaced, all of which cost my afternoon and $450. I'm not terribly ticked off because we've had the car for nearly 3½ and this is our first significant expense. And it turns out the fan belt was fine!
So this morning, the girls were fairly bonkers. Everything has been "outdoor" imagining. The couch is a swimming pool. The baseboard on my bed is a jungle gym. It was glaringly obvious that they needed time in the great outdoors. But where? The ground is like bogland after two foot of snow melted, so general backyard activities are off-limits until... May. We decided to go to the zoo instead, where Keven has never visited before. With parkas on and sandwiches in a bag, we set out for the zoo.
And I was glad we did. This was yet another experience that we would not have had without kids as our prompts. It was only about 35˚F (2˚C) outside, and I know that Keven and I would have preferred staying indoors. Instead we played piggyback to the girls (the double stroller is in retirement because of Juliette's excessive largeness, and the single stroller instigates arguments about who gets to ride), saw hissing cockroaches, an anaconda, and other nasties that I've never seen before. I rarely go to the indoor exhibits with the girls when I am by myself; it's too hard to keep track of them both among so many people. And those houses are always so darn hot. That was not a concern today, as we appreciated the respite from the cold.
We also discovered two additional advantages to visiting the zoo in January: there are radically fewer people and we got to see the polar bears for the first time. The photo show here is from the Vilas Zoo, so those are the very same polar bears. In the summer, the polar bears are always in hiding from the heat, deep within their concrete dens. This time, they were basking in the brisk air, sleeping on the rocks and sniffing the air. I would have preferred sleeping in my toasty warm bed, but they were perfectly happy with the weather about which we grumbled.
After the zoo, we made a quick trip to the playground where we ate out lunches on a train-shaped jungle gym. The girls played for a bit, but Keven and I had had enough of the frigid air. We convinced them to flee for the car with promises of animal crackers, and then we made our way to the (incredibly busy!!) library. Maybe because it was a Saturday and I simply cannot remember ever having gone to the library on a Saturday, but the place was packed. The bookshelves and DVD racks looked like the leavings of an after-Christmas sale. We grabbed a few new books for the girls and headed for home...
...where they napped. And it was good.
Then, yesterday afternoon, I spent 3½ hours at Midas to get our car's brakes worked on. I went in to check a squeaky fan belt, get an oil change, and oh, by the way, the brakes feel funny. Turns out the pads and shoes were practically welded to the drums, so much that the mechanic need to pry them apart with a crowbar. Apparently that's not good! There was no free play between the supposed-to-be moving parts, and thus there was no significant difference between braking and not braking. The hardware had to be replaced, all of which cost my afternoon and $450. I'm not terribly ticked off because we've had the car for nearly 3½ and this is our first significant expense. And it turns out the fan belt was fine!
So this morning, the girls were fairly bonkers. Everything has been "outdoor" imagining. The couch is a swimming pool. The baseboard on my bed is a jungle gym. It was glaringly obvious that they needed time in the great outdoors. But where? The ground is like bogland after two foot of snow melted, so general backyard activities are off-limits until... May. We decided to go to the zoo instead, where Keven has never visited before. With parkas on and sandwiches in a bag, we set out for the zoo.
And I was glad we did. This was yet another experience that we would not have had without kids as our prompts. It was only about 35˚F (2˚C) outside, and I know that Keven and I would have preferred staying indoors. Instead we played piggyback to the girls (the double stroller is in retirement because of Juliette's excessive largeness, and the single stroller instigates arguments about who gets to ride), saw hissing cockroaches, an anaconda, and other nasties that I've never seen before. I rarely go to the indoor exhibits with the girls when I am by myself; it's too hard to keep track of them both among so many people. And those houses are always so darn hot. That was not a concern today, as we appreciated the respite from the cold. We also discovered two additional advantages to visiting the zoo in January: there are radically fewer people and we got to see the polar bears for the first time. The photo show here is from the Vilas Zoo, so those are the very same polar bears. In the summer, the polar bears are always in hiding from the heat, deep within their concrete dens. This time, they were basking in the brisk air, sleeping on the rocks and sniffing the air. I would have preferred sleeping in my toasty warm bed, but they were perfectly happy with the weather about which we grumbled. After the zoo, we made a quick trip to the playground where we ate out lunches on a train-shaped jungle gym. The girls played for a bit, but Keven and I had had enough of the frigid air. We convinced them to flee for the car with promises of animal crackers, and then we made our way to the (incredibly busy!!) library. Maybe because it was a Saturday and I simply cannot remember ever having gone to the library on a Saturday, but the place was packed. The bookshelves and DVD racks looked like the leavings of an after-Christmas sale. We grabbed a few new books for the girls and headed for home...
...where they napped. And it was good.
2 comments:
Ah, the pleasures of the zoo on a cold day.... We spent a lot of time in the monkey house of the Philadelphia zoo last winter because it was heated.
True - and we even went into the herpetarium this time, which I've always skipped before! In the summer, who wants to go into a heated building to see bugs and reptiles. Much more appealing on a cold day... the heat, yes, but not the bugs so much.
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