So at one point I had told myself that I was never going to do “rewind” blogs. If I miss something that happened yesterday, it’s gone forever from the annals of history. But what happened yesterday at the zoo was too good to be passed up — and far too good to be lost due to my blogcrastination. After an exceptionally busy day, the boys found themselves at the zoo with their friends Ashley and Isabelle (I’m spelling Isabelle’s name correctly now, where I have used the Spanish spelling in the past).
While the kids were all playing together at the hippopotamus exhibit (ignoring the live animals in favor of the large bronze replica nearby, of course), some poor unsuspecting girl passed near Ollie with a bag of Doritos in her hand, and what can only be called An Incident ensued. Ollie (perhaps guessing by height and assuming this was Isabelle, without really inspecting his target), reached out and snatched at the bag of chips — I am not sure whether words were exchanged or not, but the girl demonstrated remarkable reflexes and stunning determination, and the Incident lasted far longer than such an incident ought to because of the determination of the two children involved. Ollie’s first mugging attempt was, in the end, a total failure. As far as I could tell, he didn’t acquire a single Dorito. I don’t know what about the incident was the most embarrassing for him (whether it be that he mugged someone random, instead of a friend; or whether it be that the mugging failed so categorically), but he did seem to react with genuine embarrassment when “the authorities” arrived.
Today, Ollie and I were on our own. Reid, his mom, and nanny (Aunt Judy) all ventured fearlessly to a quilting show. Ollie and I, spared this terrible, terrible torture instead set our sights on a visit to the Wild Animal Park. In general the thing went off without a hitch. Ollie doesn’t look at animals so much, but it is possible to stall him with food when I want to observe a particular animal for a while, and he very much enjoys running as fast as he can up and down the slopes and hills with which the park abounds.
He may have reached an interesting milestone after his nap tonight, since I think it is the first time he has ever actually asked a question of either of us, spontaneously. The question: “What name?”, asked while holding up a train to be identified by its character-name from the Thomas series. The answer: “Duncan.”