Yesterday was a momentous occasion for our clan. We had a to-the-city field trip, with Zorak, and no stress! It was lovely. Zorak has agreed that he will go with us, if I don't include him in the planning process, which I can appreciate. He spends his days at work making decisions, developing plans, and troubleshooting. When it comes to time with his family, he would like to be allowed to just come and enjoy the boys. OK.
This is only a problem because I am "the idea guy". I don't do execution well. But that's ok. Sometimes you've got to step outside your comfort zone and grow, right?
I learned a few things on this trip:
1- Mapquest LIES! You cannot get home using their directions. Or, at least, not to our home. I thought, the first two times I found myself painfully lost, that I had somehow not followed the directions. Yesterday, I had an engineer with me to verify the results, and no, it turns out that I was doing everything as directed, but the road Mapquest tells you to take ENDS, promptly and without much warning.
2- It's okay to be painfully lost if you've been there before. And it's a funny feeling to look around and say, "Oh! We're lost! Wait, it's ok! I know how to get out of from here!"
3- Zorak isn't any more comfortable with me heading into the Cities without him. This may be due to my absolute lack of fear of being lost. (You do get desensitized after a while...)
4- The volunteers at the Museum of Natural History know what little boys want to see. Little boys want to see Dinosaurs!
5- When you have been gripped by shyness and can't bring yourself to ask for the dinosaurs, it's pretty amazing to have a total stranger lean over, look you in the eye, and tell you exactly what you wanted to know!
6- Museums are so much fun with children when you let the children take the lead. You won't see everything. You won't see half of what you hoped to see. But what you see will be more fulfilling and enjoyable than anything else.
7- Even an 18 month-old baby can hang with the big boys if you're going at the children's pace. He may pass out before you pull out of your parking spot when you leave, but he can hang.
8- Go ahead and eat at one of the painfully expensive restaurants downtown before you go in. It will cost the same as eating at the McDonald's in one of the museums, but the food, atmosphere and service will be much better.
9- DC is a great visit to make when the weather is really, really bad. Parking is great and the streets are almost empty. This makes for a wonderful trip if you're not big on the whole "city-crowd" thing.
Anyhow, we had a lovely time. The boys were in heaven. Zorak and I glided along, holding hands, grinning at the boys, enjoying the day.
Today, *sniff, sniff* Smidge's crib comes down and we're putting up the toddler bed. This was wholly Zorak's idea (he doesn't want to move the crib, and would like Smidge to have a chance to get accustomed to the new bed before we turn everything upside down). I can see the logic. I can appreciate the logic. That doesn't mean I'm ready to be logical. *wink*
Kiss those babies!
Dy
5 comments:
Sounds like a great day. You're so adventurous, Dy; I admire that so much. I'm such a stick-in-the mud most of the time.
*sniffing* along with you re Smidge's crib. That was a sad day for me when my youngest said bye bye to his baby bed.
I am rofl about Mapquest LIES! I once got directions from Mapquest to my midwife's house. After 45 minutes, I finally arrived at a house that was about a 15 minute drive from my home using a logical route.
Glad y'all had a great day. :)
Google's new mapping site is so much better than Mapquest. You can manipulate the map much better, and it has much more flexible search options. The only think I don't like is that although your path is highlighted on the screen, for some reason it is not when you print the map. It's still in Beta, so hopefully they'll change that.
Somehow that link didn't come out right. It's www.maps.google.com
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