Why My Kids Prefer an Old Abandoned Zoo

If I ask my boys what they want to do, 9 times out of 10 they will choose a visit to The Old Los Angeles Zoo.  For those of you who haven’t yet discovered it, the Old Zoo is where the LA Zoo used to be located.  Sometime in the 60’s all of the animals were removed and brought to their current home about 2 miles away.  What’s left is a series of empty animal enclosures, cages, a deserted building and a bunch of hiking trails.  Despite its state of ill repair, urine smell in some places and more broken glass than a mom ever wants to see, this place is boy heaven.  The past few days my two youngest have been fighting nonstop and I knew the only way to remedy this was to get them out of the house for the afternoon.  Of course they picked the Old Zoo.  Upon our arrival and after the youngest confirmed with me that there were indeed no coyotes lurking in the bushes (there was one roaming around the last time we were there) we headed for the Zoo.  As we passed the bathroom, I made sure no one had to use it and continued up the hill toward some cages to play in.  After hiking for about 5 minutes, Nick (5) informed me that he now had to poop, of course he did.  Jack (almost 3) insisted he didn’t have to go.  So after hitting the bathroom we walked back up the hill.  Only to get about 10 minutes higher up the hill and discover that indeed, Jack had to poop now.  Another bathroom trip and we got to explore some cages.  The kids pretended they were monkeys, which doesn’t take any imagination at all.  After having a snack and collecting more sticks to add to their gigantic stick collection (carefully hidden from the gardener behind the bushes in the front yard) we were done.  The kids had fun, my house was spared an afternoon under siege, and we were two hours closer to bedtime.

A Very Wet Lunch

Saturday afternoon we hit one of our favorite Mexican dives with all three kids in tow.  It started out rough with Nick (5) complaining that he hates to go out to eat... ever.  We offered a babysitter, the fictitious, Mrs. Meanie - world’s worst babysitter.  He refused and stopped whining long enough to walk into the restaurant, sit down, and play on my iPhone.  Just when all was calm, I felt something wet pouring all over my lap.  I looked up from my menu to find Michael (8) had spilled an entire cup of Sprite across the table and managed to soak no one else but me.  And in the most uncomfortable spot as if I had just ridden Splash Mountain at Disneyland and instead of my pants and underwear being soaked with water I had been sprayed with corn syrup and ice.   Even better no one at the table a) told me that the cup had spilled b) made any effort to stop the spill before it got the entire way across the table onto my lap.   After cleaning myself off with the least absorbent napkins on the planet (picture that toilet paper that they had in elementary school bathrooms in the 80's) I decided to make the most of lunch.  I split up a quesadilla between the two youngest kids, gave most of my tacos to them as well and finally got to eating the rest of my food which was already cold.  About half way through Jack (almost 3) tells us he has to pee.  He often says this in restaurants to take a break from sitting at the table and doesn't really have to use the bathroom.  Chris (my husband) gets up to take him but the restroom is occupied and he sits back down and gets back to eating his lunch.  Jack again says he has to go pee, we tell him it's going to be a few minutes.  He has been potty trained for about 6 months already and never has accidents; we are not concerned at all.  We should have been.  I look over at Jack, he is now sitting very strangely in his highchair.  Without us realizing it, he had peed right there in the restaurants high chair and all over the floor.  I do my best to wipe off the chair and the ground beneath it with out attracting the attention of the entire restaurant, keep in mind I was using those napkins again.  After making my best effort to clean up I leave Chris with the older kids and head out to the car with Jack and quickly strip him down and strap him in his car seat. Then something goes right for a change, I find a bag of 2T clothes in the trunk that was supposed to go to goodwill weeks ago, at least one of us can have some dry pants.  I consider stripping down to get out of my own soaking wet, sticky pants but think better of it.  I'm pretty sure I can't squeeze into a 2T.  We should have just stayed home and had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.