GOTTA BE KIDDING ME

Okay, so me and Randi decided to be adventurous, daring tempters of fate by taking our FOUR boys to the zoo yesterday.

We. Are. Retarded. Here's why:

1. We both had ridiculous mornings at home that indicated trouble ahead with incidents such as a table, chairs, floor, and toddler COMPLETELY covered in milk from his cereal bowl. Was he sorry? Nope. He was living it up, splashing and playing (that was my son), as well as a potted plant repeatedly being dumped into the bathtub mom had just cleaned (that was Randi's son). But what did we do? Loaded up our kiddos and came anyway.

2. Bennett and I went over the zoo rules before we ever got out of the car: stay with mommy and have a good attitude. He had those rules down pat, reciting them back to me and everything, but when him and his buddy Cason got together, it took about 5 minutes of being out of their strollers before they both took off full-speed down the pathway, through two sets of double doors, and almost out the other side of the monkey house. It took me that long to catch up to them, and the only reason I caught them before they got out the next set of doors is because I left Jasper behind in the stroller with Randi, and two nice ladies helped thwart the two little stink-pots' efforts. Randi and I were both sweating and breathing hard at the end of this little episode. Needless to say, they stayed strapped into their strollers after that...until lunch time.

3. Jasper was a bit fussy, which was unusual because he normally has a solid nap at this time, and he looked really comfy in his side of the stroller. But I kept having to try to soothe him with the paci or by keeping the stroller moving. I later discovered that he was fussy because he'd spit up a GIGANTIC amount of milk all over himself down behind his back and his shirt was soaked. He'd been lying in wet, spoiled milk smell all morning. When I discovered this, I felt AWFUL. And of course, I forgot to bring an extra change of clothes for him this time, so he went shirtless and
sported his muscles the rest of the morning - poor baby!!

4. The older boys went to feed the birds with Randi while I stayed behind with the younger ones. Braden (Randi's youngest) slept the whole time, but Jasper kept fussing after the shirt removal and spit-up cleaning. By this time I was getting pretty hungry and knew the boys would be too when they got back. I realized it was later than I thought, and that I was, in fact, going to have to feed Jasper out in the middle of everyone (with a wrap, of course, but I really don't like doing it even then). I knew I was going to get a headache soon if I didn't eat, so I scarfed down my lunch first while Jasper cried (nice), then I fed Jasper. While I was doing this, a random woman asked me to scoot down so she could sit on the bench as well. I looked at her like, "Don't you know I'm feeding my baby?" It was totally weird and awkward.

5. The boys got back and we broke out their lunches. I packed strawberries for Bennett, which was really smart (heavy on the sarcasm) since I also put him in a white shirt. Yes, he wiped his strawberry juiced hands all over it. Randi peeled an orange that she and the boys started eating, but then the bees showed up. HA! That girl can DANCE, no lie! She danced and ran back and forth trying to get away from one determined bee. She finally had to resort to stuffing the rest of the the orange in all of their mouths :) Of course, since the boys were out of their strollers at this time, they were running all over the place, selective hearing in full gear (which means Bennett didn't listen to me at ALL and did whatever he wanted - fabulous).

6. We'd had enough at this point and decided to take a leisurely trip back to the front gates on the train. Randi lost her ticket and almost had to buy another one, we had to unload all four boys, load our double strollers, get the 2 year olds to stay on their bench, chase down Cason when he jumped off the other side of the train (after it stopped), chase down Bennett when he ran off in the opposite direction (actually, the same kind man chased them both down, one after the other, and continued holding Bennett for me until we were almost to the stroller, since I was holding Jasper), had another man unload our strollers for us, loaded up all our kids, and walked out to the parking lot, where I had to walk a mile to my car, and Randi forgot where she was parked.

7. When we got home, rather than being utterly exhausted, Bennett refused to take his nap, and that was awesome since we were both in such a great mood (again with the heavy sarcasm).

Needless to say, we'll need to re-group and come up with back-up Plans B, C and D before attempting this insanity again.