I have some words of wisdom for you, faithful reader, to
take to heart. I know, I know. You're thinking, "Oh man. The guy with a
blog is going to teach me a special life lesson. Should I just stop reading now
and spare myself?". If I was forced to answer that question, I think I'd
say "Probably?". The beauty is that since you've already taken the
time to click on the link, let the web page load, and read this far, you're
probably already committed.
Ok, words of wisdom. If you ever decide to start a blog and
insist upon sharing facets of your life as commonly as I do, don't be surprised
if you occasionally get made fun of. Truth. Although, occasionally if someone does
choose to give me a hard time (all in jest, of course), they shouldn't be
surprised to end up mentioned in a blog post. Today's recipient of that dubious
honor would be Steve Cochran.
After a conversation back and forth which resulted in me
jokingly referring to my parenting style as free-range parenting, Steve said
maybe I should make that the title of my blog. Since I'm irrationally fond of
the #DaddyWrite name, I won't be changing that. However, there's nothing saying
I can't use the concept of free-range parenting as a title for today.
 |
| A nice definition for your benefit... |
As you probably gathered from the prior day's blog, I've
been a little bummed out and experiencing some form of cabin fever/Stockholm
syndrome. So, with a warm fall day popping up randomly, I decided we should
take advantage of the niceness by heading to the zoo. So, after a $2.00 pizza
courtesy of the new Firenze,
I loaded Ellie up and headed towards the downtown area.
Once we arrived at the zoo, I began the process of getting
Ellie dressed in her jacket and her bag ready to head in. At this point, I
found myself confronted by an important decision: to stroller or not to
stroller. Over the past week or so, Ellie has found herself wanting to travel
on her own two feet more and more. Taking that into account, I thought she
might really enjoy being able to walk around the zoo. I did worry about her
getting tired or what we would do if there were a lot of people around. Therefore,
I took the stroller along as well.
 |
| If this was Ellie's stroller, perhaps I wouldn't mind it near as much. |
Our first stop after entering the zoo was to go visit the
penguins, mostly because I knew that was a great place to check Ellie's diaper
and change her if necessary. After that was done, I parked the stroller, let
Ellie loose, and began to follow her all around the penguin house. Top level,
second level, top level, outdoor penguins, second level, bottom level, weird
stomping on penguin game, bottom level. With that, Ellie started looking
towards the exit. Therefore, I scooped her up, grabbed the stroller, and headed
outside.
Once we were outside, Ellie began hinting that she wanted
back down. Therefore, that's what I did. This is where Ellie got really brave.
In fact, I watched as she was willing to wander fifteen to twenty feet away
from me at times. I even had to quickly put the brake on the stroller and run
after her at one point. Finally, I got her directed towards the jungle house
and along we went.
Once we were inside the jungle, I once again parked the
stroller and happily followed Ellie around the building. And by followed, I
mean we spent close to 25 minutes staring at the gibbons, one of which may have
been suffering from some extreme form of depression (Now after the fact, I
wonder if maybe I should have informed someone about that).
 | ||
| I think they're trying to communicate... |
Once we finally exited the jungle area, Ellie reached her
fill of walking and sought the sweet relief of her stroller. Pretty impressive considering she had spent over an hour free-ranging. With that, there
were only two more stops for us. Stop one being the tiger enclosure to watch a
tiger eat his afternoon bunny which I enjoyed in a somewhat sadistic fashion.
Stop two was more Ellie's speed as we headed to the 3:30 sea lion show.
 |
| MMM, bunny. |
Man, was that little girl stoked to see sea lions.
Throughout the entire show, we stood at the fence just a few feet away from a
trainer. Therefore, we had a great view of all of the tricks with Ellie
erupting in her distinctive cackle every time the sea lions would roll over. Once
the show ended, it was time to hit the road and head for home.
While I've been trying to free-range Ellie for a while
(within reason), this was really the first experience doing so in a public
setting. Perhaps I've stumbled upon the next wave in parenting. Either that or
this is something all parents eventually do. #DaddyWrite
No comments:
Post a Comment