Sometimes Stevie just wakes up too dang early.  Like the kind of early where the birds aren’t chirping, there’s no daylight, and we just know we will all be exhausted the rest of the day.  And it’s one thing to be exhausted, but it also throws off the whole nap/eating schedule thing that we’ve worked for months to implement!

On this particular morning, Stevie woke up around 5am.  The first thing I thought, when I realized he would not being going back to sleep, was “Oh my gosh.  We still have 5 hours until therapy.  And 9 hours until his afternoon nap!”  And then I felt all sorts of anxious.  Somehow we survived the morning, but with the nap schedule thrown off kilter, we had a lot of hours in the afternoon to kill as well.

But by some stroke of genius, I remembered the L.A. Zoo.  Oh, the zoo!  A perfect way to spend some time out of the house.  And now that Stevie is getting around like a champ, it really was the best thing we could have done.  The neighborhood park is too boring for me, and he only likes the slide anyway.  Disneyland is so crowded this time of year, I’m afraid to let him out of his stroller because of his wandering tendencies.  But the zoo! It was empty. There was so much room!  So much space to just let him go!  Sure, he saw a couple animals, and he got unusually excited about waterfalls, but he mostly just enjoyed being out.  And I still got to be a tourist with my camera.  A good compromise for the both of us.

^^^oh the voice in my head was hilarious^^^

^^^he doesn’t usually like getting wet, but he was all about the misters^^^

^^^he chose this exact moment to scale a flight of stairs ALL BY HIMSELF.^^^
when he got to the top, he screamed for help to get down

^^^nerd alert. i took LOTS of giraffe pictures.  they were so close i felt like i was on safari!^^^