It’s only day 2, and I’m not sure how long we can keep this up.
This morning Tomris was up at 4am, but I convinced her to lay in bed until five - when Tuana woke up then I got a big cup of coffee and sat in the downstairs den with them. Tomris played, while Tuana looked and smiled around.
Ezra woke up early too and I brought him downstairs to play and eventually Teoman woke up too. Pretty soon they were all hungry and NO ONE in the house was getting up - so I gave Cheerios to Tomris, oatmeal to Teoman, fruit to Ezra, and started frying up some bacon, eggs, and toast. I fed the kids bacon as it was coming off the pan, scramble half the eggs and fried the other half as well as the toast in the bacon grease. Disgusting, I know, but we’ve been living on a bacon shortage here - so I figured it was okay.
My sister just picked at her son’s plate, Mike didn’t come down until much later but ate a helping as well. At breakfast we’d finished the milk, eggs, bacon, and coffee and I felt like I was on ration cards because it didn’t seem like we were getting anything else out of that fridge.
My sister made some peanut butter sandwiches and small snacks for the kids - but I wasn’t sure what her plan was for the adults - actually, she said we can snack on the kids foods but I was already making second plans because peanut butter squares were not going to cut it for me.
We headed out to Como Zoo - Tolga and I had actually planned on going to the big Minnesota State zoo, but Como was free and close - so with our two young families, it seemed more practical.
But it wasn’t. The zoo was packed. The whole park seemed packed because the zoo is just a small part of “Como Park” where there are biking paths, ball fields, a lake, golf course, picnic and playgrounds - and so festivals and weekend picnickers, sporting events, and other miscellaneous activities had already filled the corners of the park and it was only 10:30am. We parked and made our way pass a small amusement park - paid the “suggested donation” to get in, but we never made it too far into the zoo for a few reasons.
- We stopped to stare every few minutes and the most common of creatures (i.e. a chipmunk running across the path).
- Toddlers have many and various needs all the time.
- We didn’t have a map, my sister insisted she knew where the polar bears were and they were NOT by the bison (they were by the bison, we found out later - after she left and we could pause and look at a map).
- My sister’s children are on a TIGHT schedule. I hadn’t realized how obsessive she was about their schedule even though the first night we arrived she had mentioned about a hundred times that “Ezra was sooooo tired” and “it’s way past his bedtime”. Well the last 30-40 minutes at the zoo was spent following Sherah who kept saying “we have to go” “let’s make our way back” “I’m going to split you and mom up because we’ll never make it to the polar bears.” (We didn’t make it). We circled back to the entrance and Sherah and family went home while my mom stayed with us to have lunch at the cafe.
Actually, first my mom wanted to go eat at W.E. Frost - or some other extravagant place - she was excited to go somewhere fancy with us, drink wine and relax. But her excitement she’ll easily put to the side as while I wasn’t as obsessive about a schedule - the hour and a half it would take to find the place and order was discouraging me and it was already past twelve.
We got home just before 2pm and they were sleeping hard in the car.
However, they all woke up and hit the ground running when they realized we were back at Auntie Sherah's house.
At night we went to Minneahaha park - ate at the Sea Salt Cafe and listed to some ho-dunk band. Teoman, Tomris and Ezra danced to the 5-man band of a stand-up double bass, a banjo, violin, guitar and saw. (The man was drawing a bow across the saw to get an obnoxious sound). The female guitarist occasionally put hers down and brought out a platform to to dance. 
The kids danced right along with their poor overtired legs.
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