Ana (again)
Oct. 1st, 2006 12:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Spent Saturday with her and Deniz while the respective parents got various things done. It was a pleasant day to start, so we went to the Central Park Zoo. Got out of the train, and it was already overcast. Got drizzly before we even left the zoo.
Totally unfair. Normally, you can go to the zoo when it's sunny, and it's really crowded - but it's a nice day out. Or you can go when it's overcast and have the place to yourselves. But we had to deal with crowds and clouds together, which was just plain meanness.
I spent a small fortune hyping these kids up on sugar ($4 for Dipping Dots! Which they didn't even eat all of, I knew I should have made them share! $2 for cotton candy (which I ended up stealing from them and eating myself, claiming later that what they hadn't finished had "fallen on the ground")! $1.89 for a chocolate croissant to split between them!) and almost as much on the two cheapest umbrellas I could get at the zoo ($6 each - the kids wanted the pretty butterfly ones, but no way I was spending $15 twice on umbrellas, of all things). And the umbrellas weren't even used, as the drizzle petered out. Ugh.
But we had fun, went all around the zoo. I had my wrap with me, and Ana was up again, down again about that. We left the zoo, rushed through the children's zoo (and only because I'd forgotten to stop by the bathroom before leaving the main zoo), pausing long enough for the sing-along, and went on the the playground with the 45 foot tall slide.
Wherein Ana started to throw tantrums, tantrums over literally nothing. And she had time-outs over them, of the sort that she only had to sit until she calmed down. Eventually, she got bumped into on the slide because she'd dawdled, and here I am at the top, and I watch her go sit down to cry - and I just decide to let her do so, because my running to her side when she cries sure isn't helping.
After I eventually get down there, I find that the kid who bumped into her, and his dad, are hovering around her. "We were worried she might have been hurt!" cries the dad. "But she just sat there at the slide!" says the kid, before he's shushed.
I have a lot of sympathy for this kid. For one thing, I agree with him. As I said to him "Yes, I saw - I could see everything from up top. She knows she shouldn't hang out at the bottom of slides for exactly this reason, and now maybe I won't have to say so again. She's fine, anyway. She got up and walked all the way over here to cry, didn't she?"
(I don't think his dad appreciated this, but I was at a loss over what I *should* do - Ana had eaten real food by this point, and I couldn't very well put her down for a nap. I settled for leaving, which she protested over, but it seemed to make the most sense.)
And then she calmed down for the juggler show we watched, and I paid the man for directing us to the portapotties. With the portasink. Too. Cool.
And we passed under the Delacorte clock right at six, so we watched it. "I used to see this with your mommy and your granddaddy when we were just your age, Ana."
Ana at this point had been thoroughly tied up on my back, on the grounds that she was clearly exhausted. So she drowsed off and on the whole trip home.
It was a nice day out.
Totally unfair. Normally, you can go to the zoo when it's sunny, and it's really crowded - but it's a nice day out. Or you can go when it's overcast and have the place to yourselves. But we had to deal with crowds and clouds together, which was just plain meanness.
I spent a small fortune hyping these kids up on sugar ($4 for Dipping Dots! Which they didn't even eat all of, I knew I should have made them share! $2 for cotton candy (which I ended up stealing from them and eating myself, claiming later that what they hadn't finished had "fallen on the ground")! $1.89 for a chocolate croissant to split between them!) and almost as much on the two cheapest umbrellas I could get at the zoo ($6 each - the kids wanted the pretty butterfly ones, but no way I was spending $15 twice on umbrellas, of all things). And the umbrellas weren't even used, as the drizzle petered out. Ugh.
But we had fun, went all around the zoo. I had my wrap with me, and Ana was up again, down again about that. We left the zoo, rushed through the children's zoo (and only because I'd forgotten to stop by the bathroom before leaving the main zoo), pausing long enough for the sing-along, and went on the the playground with the 45 foot tall slide.
Wherein Ana started to throw tantrums, tantrums over literally nothing. And she had time-outs over them, of the sort that she only had to sit until she calmed down. Eventually, she got bumped into on the slide because she'd dawdled, and here I am at the top, and I watch her go sit down to cry - and I just decide to let her do so, because my running to her side when she cries sure isn't helping.
After I eventually get down there, I find that the kid who bumped into her, and his dad, are hovering around her. "We were worried she might have been hurt!" cries the dad. "But she just sat there at the slide!" says the kid, before he's shushed.
I have a lot of sympathy for this kid. For one thing, I agree with him. As I said to him "Yes, I saw - I could see everything from up top. She knows she shouldn't hang out at the bottom of slides for exactly this reason, and now maybe I won't have to say so again. She's fine, anyway. She got up and walked all the way over here to cry, didn't she?"
(I don't think his dad appreciated this, but I was at a loss over what I *should* do - Ana had eaten real food by this point, and I couldn't very well put her down for a nap. I settled for leaving, which she protested over, but it seemed to make the most sense.)
And then she calmed down for the juggler show we watched, and I paid the man for directing us to the portapotties. With the portasink. Too. Cool.
And we passed under the Delacorte clock right at six, so we watched it. "I used to see this with your mommy and your granddaddy when we were just your age, Ana."
Ana at this point had been thoroughly tied up on my back, on the grounds that she was clearly exhausted. So she drowsed off and on the whole trip home.
It was a nice day out.
