July 5 & 6: Splash Pad and Zoo

With an abundance of nice weather, we continued the fun in the sun. While we took it easy on the 5th after the go-go-go of Independence Day, in the afternoon we visited the local park in with an awesome "Splash Pad" which I referenced last summer. I don't have any photos of Harrison frolicking in the water, mostly because he insisted "mommy go too!" and pulled me by the hand into the water fray.

Auntie Chyna set out some towels on a grassy knoll to sun herself and during a snack break we sat down to join her. Harrison grabbed his box of snacks and ran top speed down the little knoll, stopped dead at the bottom, bent down to eat a treat, then ran back up hill to me. Repeat. Repeat. Not sure why he was doing it but it was funny.

The following day, we went to the Woodland Park Zoo, one of our favorite places which never fails to enthrall and entertain Harrison. Penguins are always a must with him!

One of the first animals we saw were the hippos, which he accurately pointed out were sleeping in the water.

Climbing the hippo statue

As part of his mental development, Harrison has learned that there are other mommies and daddies out there other than his parents; in fact he likes to categorize things into families whenever possible. For example, we say a couple of gray wolves and once he correctly understood they were wolves, the next thing he said was "mommy and daddy wolf" followed by the question [where did] "baby wolf go?" Or depending on his mood he might decide that the two large animals are a mommy and a baby (I assume because he feels particularly attached to me at that moment).

In any case, while there were not any wolf pups at the zoo there were statues of wolf pups nearby and Harrison decided to climb into their den:

Another thing I love about the zoo is that you can bring food with you and picnic anywhere.

After some PB&J and trail mix with M&M's (or in Harrison's case, just M&M's without the trail mix!), we enjoyed elephants, lions, etc. Harrison insisted we see the monkeys but somewhere around lunch time, we accidentally passed them and by the time he asked for monkeys again, they were too far away and our day was winding down so I lied to my child and told him that "mommy looked for the monkeys but can't find them because they are sleeping, it is their nap time." That seemed to resonate with him, especially since we had earlier looked for snow owls who were indeed asleep in the day time. He accepted this statement although he did make me promise we see the monkeys next time.

A few hours later, dad returned home from work. Dad took Harrison upstairs and proceeded to ask him what he saw at the zoo today. When they came downstairs again, dad was so proud that Harrison recalled things so clearly. I asked what he had told him. Dad's reply was, "he said he saw the monkeys, and they were sleeping."

Grandpa Dale left on July 7th and we miss having him around. Harrison woke up the next morning and asked [where did] "grandpa go?" When I reminded him grandpa flew home on an airplane, he replied "noooo, grandpa no go."

The seldom mentioned fourth member of Team Fein, Winston, misses grandpa the most. Grandpa played, and played, and played with Winston every day to the point where Winston immediately launched into a barking frenzy the minute grandpa would enter the room. On July 8th, Winston literally moped around the house, which really says something considering bull dogs generally look mopy all the time. He nary lifted a paw. On July 9th, we left the house for an hour and returned to find Winston had protest-peed on the rug. I knew it was a protest becuase it was just a little bit, clearly not done out of  necessity.

Visit soon grandpa, can't wait to see you again!

Evidently there are a lot of bronze statues as we seemed
to have found and photographed all of them.