Zoo days

Yesterday I’d intended to get organized to leave on Monday, make lists for the weekend, and generally be domestic. Until JY called and said “let’s take our kids to the zoo!”  (We both have memberships and it is about 10-15 min away:))

So I threw some stuff in a bag and bundled Noah up against the cold-between-pavillions and headed out.  It’s been a few months since we went and it was amazing. Noah and JY’s daughter (she has a baby too) get along really well – the age gap is such that Noah gets bossed but thinks it’s playing. :)

The mummy orangutang (sp?) was up against the glass in the upper observation area (Noah climbed the stairs gleefully) and her baby was riding on her and when she saw Noah’s pear slice she came over for a look, and Noah went wild with delight, signing ‘baby baby baby.’ He laughed at the turtle swimming, signing turtle turtle. He signed duck for ducks.  He toddled all about gleefully and made it his job to climb all staircases 5 or 6 times.  But the best part? The plastic door hanging-bits that dangle down to keep the birds & butterflies from flying out.  That cracked him up totally, that you could walk through what looked like a solid thing.

He’s totally interactive with the zoo now and it’s so cool. Plus I got hangout time with JY which is always nice.

By 12:30 he was ready for a nap and we came home and I got a chore done that’s been hanging over me for a looong time and that was great. Later we went to the library to load up on books for vacation.

So it was a wonderful end to the week. Noah was wriggly happy babbly and although he took forever to go to sleep, so full of monkeys! birds! turtles! was his head, it was cuteness all the way down into slumber.  He’s so close to putting himself to bed now; he asks to go into his crib after his story, so we put him in, and he babbles and thrashes around and almost goes to sleep, snuggling up with his pillow and blanket, and then at some point gives up and asks to come out and then it takes 5 minutes of either rocking or nursing to go down.  Our vacation will interrupt all that but I see light at the end of the bedtime tunnel, eventually.

Except, of course, there’s that little counterpoint running in my head lately.  I’ve been waking up in nightmares about labour, nightmares about Noah, nightmares about not being able to breathe, and still aching for Emily. I still have dreams where I lost her, where people come up to tell me that I forgot my daughter behind.  And yesterday I was both sad and angry that my zoo day was undercut, not in a selfless mom wishing Emily got to go to the zoo way, but a very selfish, me-oriented anger that MY day was also including bone-tiredness and sadness and a sort of being sick – sick at myself, a little, but angry that all this keeps coming in.

Which is ok I think. I think. It’s not very evolved but then grief isn’t, always, is it?

Today I have a zillion things to do and can’t concentrate, but they will get done.