Lincoln Park Zoo

Santa, year 3

/ Shane / 3 Comments

We took Evie to see Santa last night at the zoo, and I have to say, everything went better than I could have expected.

The big question of course, was what she would do when it came time to see Santa. She had been excited in theory, but when we got to the line, she seemed a little quiet. I was worried that would translate into not wanting to talk to Santa, but I was way off on that one. She had no issues whatsoever, and after I told her to speak up so Santa could hear her, she shouted the rest of her answers to him. In fact, if anything, Santa was more afraid of her than she was of him. She expected to climb right up on his lap, but he was talking to her a little bit first, probably feeling her out to see if she was going to cry or something, and she was a little miffed that she didn’t get to sit right away.

She seemed a little dazed by the whole experience, but happy to chomp away at the green candy cane Santa gave her. All and all it was a pretty pleasant experience, with a really small line and no professional photographers. We much prefer to to take our own pictures, and sometimes they don’t let you do that if they want you to pay for a picture (see last year).

After that we wandered around the zoo for awhile to look at the Christmas lights. They have a couple of displays set to music, and Evie really dug that. Especially since she got to hear her two favorites, Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. We’ve been listening to the Christmas radio station in the car, but they never, ever play Jingle Bells. So Evie usually spends the whole time demanding I play Jingle Bells on the radio. Therefore, I was extremely relieved to hear it (4 times) at the zoo. We also got to see a few animals (really just a jaguar and some monkies) and drank some hot cider in the member’s lounge, because that’s how we roll (zoo membership paying off!)

As a side note, remember how you used to see groups of smokers huddled around an ashtray in the cold? Texters are the new smokers. I don’t know what kind of herd instinct makes them huddle together to text (maybe for warmth?) but at every exhibit there were a little group of people off to the side silently texting. It was really kind of creepy.

This morning when Evie woke up she was in a super mood, jumping up and down and making up Christmas songs in her crib. I felt really bad when she revealed this was because she thought that Santa had brought her presents last night. I could see how that would be a little confusing, so I felt really bad for her. She took it in stride though, and didn’t get too upset when we told her she had a few more days to wait.

One last story. We were looking at the monkeys and some random lady started talking to Evie, but in a really condescending way, as if Evie were like 6 months old. “Do you see the monKEY? The baby monKEY? Oh, she’s just loving this!” Evie responded with something like, “Actually my dear woman, I daresay you are mistaken! Note the concentric rings of color on its tail, which denote that this is in fact an adolescent of the species, not a baby at all. Not to mention that this is not technically a monkey as denoted by the genus…” Well, I don’t remember the quote exactly, but something to that effect. Somehow the lady fixated on one word, ignoring all the rest and started gushing, “Baby! Yes! It’s a BABY monkey!” At this point Evie pretty much just ignored her. I was pretty annoyed, but then I heard the lady turn to her maybe 10 year old and say, “The monkey is drinking his wa-wa!” and I realized that talking down to kids just must be her thing. Lady, if your kid doesn’t say “water” instead of “wa-wa” by the time he’s 10, god help him.

Closer and closer to Halloween

/ Shane / 1 Comment

On Friday, Evie and I tried our most ambitious baking experiment yet: a pumpkin roll.

Pumpkin roll is easily in my top 2 deserts all time. I could probably eat one by myself, in a sitting, if I had to. But this is the first time I ever tried to make one. People kind of talk it up like it is hard, so I was a little worried, but honestly it wasn’t really that much trouble. And it was deeeelicious (even though half of it was eaten by a bunch of barbarians).

On Saturday we hit up the Halloween thing at the Lincoln Park Zoo, where we are members. It was a cold, wet, miserable day like you wouldn’t believe. The kind of day where nobody should be outside, everyone should be inside, under blankets, with something warm to drink. So traipsing around the zoo wasn’t really the greatest idea. Especially since Evie couldn’t wear her coat, because that would have ruined her awesome bat costume. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but most of the indoor enclosures were closed for the day, meaning we couldn’t get out of the elements. Luckily the bat enclosure wasn’t closed, so we were able to get some pictures of Evie in her bat costume looking at the actual bats. We did not stick around for the music or trick-or-treating, but Evie did ride on the carousel, so she was happy.

Finally, on Sunday we carved pumpkins. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that Evie requested that her pumpkin be crying, with tears running down its face. That being said, I am quite proud of the way hers turned out, very sad looking. Evie was a good model, fake crying for me whenever I needed it, to get the look right. She wanted my pumpkin to be angry / scary and Sara’s to be happy. She helped do hers, but got bored long before everything was done. That’s okay, I had fun doing it. Plus I have a bunch of roasted pumpkin seeds to eat now!

One last thing to mention about the weekend, I opened my first jar of pickles! They were very good. If I had been given that jar by my grandma, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But, since I was the one actually making them, I was maybe a little over critical of them. They were a little vinegary and a little salty. Still, all in all, not too shabby for my first time out!