I have a (hardly new) confession to make regarding my
daughter. If she does not grow up to be a veterinarian or zookeeper or even
someone who works in animal control, I will be incredibly shocked.
I say this because Ellie has spent literally the entire week
asking to see animals. It began as far back as Monday with requests to go see
"Papa's cows" again. Those were followed by requests to go to the zoo
on Tuesday.
Finally on Wednesday, I promised to take her to the Red Barn
Farm in Weston that afternoon. However, I had a caveat; she absolutely had to
be on her best behavior. That was not to be as she succumbed to her basic toddler
instincts and threw a horrendous tantrum. Although, if I'm being 100% honest,
it had less to do with the tantrum and more to do with her napping for three
hours.
Today though would finally be Ellie's day. With Bethany
leaving town this morning to head to a women's retreat for the weekend, I
really wanted to make today a fun day for my daughter.
Conveniently enough,
this weekend marks the final days of the livestock shows at the American Royal.
Therefore, as soon as Bethany left for the morning at 9:00, Ellie and I loaded
up and headed down to the West Bottoms to partake in some old-fashioned cow watching.
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| Someone, somewhere has probably asked this question in real life |
This probably goes without saying but I didn't plan this
trip out particularly well. For proof, look no further than the fact that I
didn't realize one had to pay for parking ($10?!?!) when going to the American
Royal and had no cash on me to boot. Lucky for us, we found a parking garage
less than a 1/4 mile away from the arena that did accept credit cards.
Once Ellie and I made the cold trek from the garage to the
arena, we started our journey by wandering back into the "stables"
area of Hale Arena to check out the livestock. Ellie was so overcome with
excitement over seeing live cows that she couldn't even string together a
coherent sentence to describe what she was seeing.
"Ellie see cow...eating...no...standing...vacuuming...not
Papa's cow...cow not dirty"
After roaming the "stables" for a while, we found
our way into the show ring where a Charolais show was going on. Obviously, the
ring during a show is no place for a toddler. Taking that into account, we
wandered through an open gate and climbed up into the stands where Ellie would
sit and enjoy some animal crackers as we watched the judging.
Once that particular judging session had ended, I decided it
was a great time for Ellie to take a bathroom break. Following said break, we
wandered into the very prestigious and obviously well-known American Royal
Museum. I say this because I definitely didn't realize that this museum was a
thing until today.
While it wasn't a huge (or thrilling) museum by any means, there
were plenty of hands-on activities that served to entertain Ellie for a few
minutes. My personal favorite was when Ellie was able to pretend she was
grooming a horse. Although, us weighing ourselves in a cattle chute is a close
second. For the record, the scale was inaccurate by about five pounds.
After that, we wandered back inside the arena for some more
judging. Ellie and I spent about 30 minutes happily watching from the stands
before Ellie informed me that "Ellie's tired of sitting." With that,
we decided to make one more pass through the "stables" in an attempt
to find the Angus section.
Upon discovering the Angus section, Ellie was overjoyed to
find that there weren't just cows standing and eating or being groomed. In her
own words, there were also "Cows taking shower!". In fact, she was so
intrigued by this that we stood there for a good ten minutes watching people
bathe their cattle.
Finally, my daughter looked at me with her big blue eyes and
simply said, "Ellie getting pretty tired of cows. Go home now?". So
with that, we trekked out of the arena and headed back to our car.
There was one final mystery to be solved though before we
could head home. Namely, how much would I be paying for our stint in this
parking garage. Fortunately for me, when I scanned my ticket, it came out to a not-so-painful $3.00.
I guess it pays to be cheap and not pay for
parking at the first lot I find? #DaddyWrite
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