Didn't plan for pigeon attack

 

The weather was nice and my work schedule had eased, so I planned a trip to the zoo on Friday.  Since the last time we went, Maya completely skipped her morning nap, too busy looking around at the animals, I tried to plan a perfectly timed outing this trip. 

We loaded ourselves, our lunch, bread for the ducks and our sleeping Maya into the car and headed off.  And it worked out pretty well that we got to Hermann Park just about the time Maya was waking and ready to eat, and I was quite proud of my plan to bring bread for Collin so he had something to occupy him while I nursed Maya.  I set off to find a bench while Collin fed the ducks. 

But I hadn't anticipated a flock of about 50 pigeons being aggressively interested in Collin's bread for the ducks.  Collin was scared and I was pretty stuck, with Maya obliviously eating away and the birds surrounding us.  Once Collin realized they weren't going to actually attack him, he began one of his favorite activities, bird chasing:

Maya and her full belly contently checking out the pigeons and ducks while we threw out the last of the bread.

Once we made it into the zoo, prompted by Collin (maybe just because he knows the drill now), he posed at statues along the way.

We had a really low-key visit, on our own schedule.  Since my sweet grandma gifted us with a zoo membership, I don't feel the need to get my money's worth out of every visit, so we took a relaxed pace, saw what we wanted to see, but skipped a lot of the animals normally on our path.

We ate lunch at the giraffes and then, as a reward for good behavior, I took both kids on the carousel.  I had to buy a ticket for Maya which seemed a little ridiculous (it was $1.25 so not a big deal), and so she rode on an animal too.  While I hadn't intended to have kids over 3 years apart, at places like the zoo where Collin can be helpful with Maya and can climb onto his carousel animal pretty independently, I'm grateful for their age gap. 

Maya was delighted on the carousel, grinning and giggling throughout the entire ride.

One last picture by the giraffes and we called it a day.