Last Thursday night, we let her in on a little secret that we were going to the zoo in the morning… information we withheld in part to bribe good behavior and in part to encourage a speedy bedtime routine. She asked to see some bunnies and hoped for a squirrel sighting and waved her arms in excitement before climbing into her bed without us having to ask.
The next morning we made our way to the animals waiting for us behind their enclosures and we trekked around the paved hills that provided paths between creatures much larger than us and some stronger than us and others we wanted to take home with us. She held hands with a friend she’s known her whole life, the daughter of her mother’s friend she’s known her whole life that met us there to navigate the trails between giraffes and zebras to black bears and flamingos. We watched her watching a female gorilla as she held her babies and we treated ourselves to frozen lemonades in a failed attempt to fight the heat of the North Carolina sun before moving on to view bison.
We laughed, we walked, and we wiped sweat from our brows all in abundance and all as a result of the temperature combined with the joyful challenge of parenting our own. We saw a polar bear out of his element and elephants very much in theirs and just before we packed our belongings and the memories we made to leave we saw exactly what Madison hoped to see the most… a squirrel… and our trip to the zoo was deemed successful by all standards.
Cute photo of the girls holding hands and yay she got to see a squirrel :).
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