Saturday, July 4, 2009

Celebrating the 4th with zoo animals, pizza & cookies

Since we got to see fireworks at the Shorebirds game last night, we decided to sleep in this morning, and after a nice, relaxing, lazy day...we ran over to the zoo for a little bit in the early evening. Oh my goodness...I think our child BELONGS in a zoo! She's right at home...saying "Hi"...and "I lubboo" to all the animals. She WON'T leave one exibit without the promise of another one...and as you walk the paths with her, she's repeating "Moy aamals. Moy aamals!" She loved the flamingos, the llama, and the bison especially (which she was calling a "yak" because when she asked her Daddy "Wuss dat?" He told her it was a yak. Avalai was telling every child and parent that passed by "Iss a yak! See it? Dey it iss!" They all chuckled at her...and as I walked farther down toward the next exhibit, I noticed that the sign in front of the "yak" said it was a "bison"!!! Goodness did we feel stupid. I didn't think to question Matt. I assumed he had read a sign that told him it was a yak! Then I felt dumb because I do know that yaks are mainly up in frigid climates unlike this hot day! Duh!! We tried to tell Avalai that it was really a bison, but I don't think she believed us, and we just confused her greatly!
This zoo trip wasn't a long one. Not quite an hour. So as we were heading out, because the zoo was closing, Avalai had a 10 second melt-down. She did NOT want to leave the animals! And as the tears of separation were flowing, we see her stop for a second, regain her composure, and say with every ounce of hope she could muster, "Tores??? Tores?" Like, well, if you take me to some stores, then I guess I can bear to leave the zoo. Since we were already planning to at least go to the grocery store for a couple things, we quickly promised that we'd go to stores. That calmed her, and literally every 30 seconds in the car as we drove to the grocery store, she'd pipe up "Tores? Tores Mommy!! Yes!" And we'd assure her again that we hadn't forgotten. We just weren't there yet.
We also picked up our favorite Uno's spicy chicken flatbread pizza. It has wowza sauce, and we get lots of kalamata olives added, since that's Avalai's main pizza request. If we even mention pizza she hollers "Ollies? Ollies!!" She eats all the kalamata olives off her pizza first. Black olives have no taste...so she could care less about them, but she'll scarf down green ones or kalamata ones.
She's been nicely asking for cookies for a couple days now, and I promised her we'd try to make some. So, after dinner tonight, she helped us make some chocolate chip cookies. That's quite an experience with a 2-yr-old! She really wants to help, but boy does she make a bigger mess. I try to be patient with her as she's trying to scoop dough with her little spoon, and bits get flung around the kitchen... she just wants so badly to do it herself now.
She was very proud of them when she finished...and watched them go in the oven as Daddy took her down for a bath. And magically, when she came back upstairs in her little bath towel... they were just coming out of the oven ready to eat.
So, we turned the tv to the NY City Macy's fireworks special, and watched the skies light up in an amazing spectacle as we all had milk and cookies on this Fourth of July.
A great way to celebrate together :)

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