The Salvateenies: Back to the Zoo

We went back to the zoo today - third time in a month! Between what we would have paid for the adult entries and the two used parking vouchers, we will have the next 13 months of zoo membership for $3! Not bad...

Again, it was cool and foggy, so we got to see more active animals - even some I've never seen before, like the Cassowary:

It's a bird, related to an emu, but with a head that looks like it was sculpted, or made out of legos or playdough or something. Totally exotic and weird.

We also visited the Children's Zoo and saw some keeper chats about the birds of prey.

This is an owl, dining on rat. I guess his mom never taught him to twirl his entrails.

This is Frank, the Harris Hawk, hiding his rat feast.

The other new experience this trip was a stop at the playground. The Salvateenies played on the swings.

Caroline liked the swings

Daniel loved the swings!

Max liked the swings, until they started moving...

For whatever reason, Max REALLY didn't like being in the swing. Uncle Kelly took him for a test swoosh down a slide and he wasn't into that either. He was ok sitting on my lap in the "big kids" swing and he seemed ok going side-to-side, too. But front-to-back? No dice!

If you don't believe that silly, adventurous Max was really not a fan of the swings, check out this video:

And to see Daniel and Caroline REALLY loving the swings...

Amid all these new experiences at the zoo, we counted about 26 instances of people commenting on the triplets, either to us or to each other as they passed by. But, in a huge surprise to me, there were two additional comments we had not heard before. The first was from a woman who asked, "You have triplets? So do we!" She had four year olds, two boys and a girl, and then another, younger child. One of the boys was very excited to see triplet babies and announced, "Just like us! Two boys, one girl!" The mom said she was proof that you can get through the baby years, but that she wouldn't take up any more of our time. Up by the polar bears, I noticed a woman with toddlers sprinting away from a double stroller. I was about to comment to my brother that that was the age I was really scared of, when the mom turned and asked, "You have triplets, too?" I thought, of course, that she had bumped into the same other family we had. But, no! There were THREE of those little kids running around the stroller! She couldn't talk more, since she had her toddlers to corral, but she did give us kudos for getting the Salvateenies out and about. That's right! Three sets of Triplets!

We came home, tired and hungry, and had yummy barley and broccoli for dinner - an appropriate combination since, as a child I used to call the vegetable "barkley" (and I also used to try, painstakingly, to explain to my parents that "barkley is poison", but they wouldn't buy it.)

After dinner the babies settled in on the floor to play, but Caroline was a little fussy, so I held her on my lap. I think she was fussy because of her teething. I have facts to back up this hypothesis: