Menageries and Potty Training

--I guess that title will make sense eventually. Sometimes when I start a post I'm really not even sure.-- Recently I had signed up to take the kids to the local zoo. (Looking back on it, I'm really not sure what I was thinking. I mean, I take them everywhere mostly by myself, but a trip to the zoo was uncharted territory even for me. Especially at 6 months pregnant. I'm not exactly fast on my feet should a kiddo jump into the tiger cage, ya know. I was also having flashbacks to that time we took Merrick to an aquarium at about Jericho's age. It was a nightmare, and he was on a leash, and I had reinforcements. haha.) It was a good deal through one of the local homeschool groups, though, and I hate for the kiddos to miss out on everything fun just because I'm doing the wobble, or the waddle whichever, these days. So I said, "self, suck it up. you're going to the zoo and you're going to like it."

On the other half of the title, I had decided to potty train Jericho this week. I had been thinking he was "ready" for a while now, but just hadn't taken the plunge because honestly sometimes it's easier to just deal with changing a diaper than be diaper-free with the chance that someone will pee all over themselves. But I was having these visions of having just a few months diaper free, for the first time in 6 years. It sounded pretty awesome if I could pull it off. I buy the cheapest diapers I can find, but still...it adds up financially after awhile, especially when your kid wears size 73 diapers and only like 2 come in a box. ;) Ok, not that bad...but J-Hawk definitely has more junk in the trunk than the other two Barron children before him, both of whom never graduated from a size 3 diaper.

I say this with my fingers crossed and while knocking on wood, he's done fabulously. After about the first day he's been pretty much accident free, even overnight and during naps. I guess the non-speaking caveman act he puts on is just to keep us fooled? Kid really does know what's going on. ;) So I think it's safe to say, after managing a day trip to the zoo with not a single accident (on no nap and lots of juice/water/excitement), Jericho is potty trained and I'm on diaper vacay until Lady A is born. Sidenote: 3 Day Potty Training. DO IT. It's worked on all 3 of my kids, who were all potty trained -through no credit to myself because I can't even make them get off my coffee table while I'm writing this- completely, including sleeping accident free, in about 3 days each. (It does typically take longer to get, ahem, number 2 figured out. It seems to freak kids out at first to use the toilet for that, but they get that quickly after.) I do have to remind him to go...but he'll get the hang of that eventually, too.

Now, back to the zoo. (I just felt the need to also throw in there one of the reasons I was so terrified of the zoo. We were going there with no diapers.) It went surprisingly well, since Jericho did so well, and since there were tons of other kids there being just as bad as mine were. ;) We saw lots of cool animals, tried to climb into their cages, tried to feed them things they shouldn't eat, tried to mimic every. animal. sound. for the entire trip home, etc. (That's what you do at a zoo, right?) We even went on this fun "sky safari", which is pretty much a ski lift over the animal pens. In hindsight, it sounds like a horrible idea and I'm not sure why I did that either. Three children and a pregnant lady (who just made the cutoff...3rd trimester and we woulda been out of luck. Although I'm not sure what's going to happen in the 10 minutes you're over the animal cages. Labor and delivery? Well, in my case, maybe. Jericho's labor was pretty fast.) flying over rhinos and giraffes and lions. But I think I just wanted a good excuse to sit down for a few minutes. And Jericho was a little concerned about where exactly that thing was taking us and where the ground was going...so he was a little angel who did not wiggle the whole time. I almost begged the operator to let me take a second loop.

We started to get a little warm towards the end of the zoo loop, but for the most part they kept the complaining to a minimum. I seriously need to invest in some warm weather clothing, however...especially if I'm going to be out in the sun pushing over 100 pounds of kid in a stroller. But by that point we had seen most of the "fun animals", the kiddos weren't too interested in 45 species of deer. Who knew there were that many kids of horned things with long legs? I managed to get out of the park without them noticing the gift shop, which is also a major win for the day. We do wish that Billy could have gone with us, but we had a great time. We made some fun memories together, no one got eaten by a wild animal, and no one peed in their pants. I think that's about all you can ask for in terms of a good day around here. ;)