The Just Right Outing

Last week was the week of  ‘no fun’ for toddler. Big girls were finally back to school after the holiday break. Astrid and I spent the week catching up…Target, CVS, grocery shopping, vacuuming, mountains of laundry, maybe some Dora so I could catch-up on email.  I don’t understand why she likes Dora. I miss Gabba.

They always said that the third child gets to go to Target as an outing because when do you have time to take them to the zoo?

So today we went to the zoo. Because I felt we needed to.

Astrid pretty much hated it. We are almost completely done with potty training so outings are a bit stressful. Astrid panicked in the tiger house that she had to ‘PEE NOW!’ and that maybe we wouldn’t make it to the potty.

We didn’t. The tiger house is the farthest building from the bathrooms.

I sure didn’t mind she had an accident.

She minded a lot.

So we left after only 20 minutes at the zoo because truly the gorillas were too scary anyway.

We got her all cleaned up and started the drive home.  We drove by Target on the way home.  Astrid was eating some goldfish(real goldfish) crackers and yelled ‘Mama, there’s Target – can we go there tomorrow?’

But I one-upped her and pulled right into that lot and we took a ride around the store in the big red cart.

We didn’t even buy anything. We just rode around in the cart eating goldfish crackers.

Then she asked if we could stop at the Target Starbucks for Mama coffee and a pink donut. So we did.

Because the third child knows Target and Starbucks by name and thinks going those places is so much better than the zoo.  Any day.

I tend to agree.

So tonight she sat at her sister’s skating lessons for an hour. I thought about how many hours of her life she has sat at lessons. Dance. Violin. Piano. Skating. Theatre.

And it dawned on me that when she really starts lessons, her older sisters will be old enough to stay home alone. And I will sit at these lessons alone. I may bring a Starbucks and read a book.

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