We went to the Cleveland Zoo today for World Breastfeeding Week. It was a beautiful day for it—sunny skies, but not too hot and we all seemed to be in surprisingly good spirits. Here are some highlights:

We spent the whole morning bribing Maya with Penguins we’d see at the zoo later. “Finish your cereal so we can see the penguins!” “Go downstairs with Mommy so we can see the penguins!” “Don’t fall asleep…” yadda yadda. We quickly learned that Cleveland Zoo doesn’t have penguins. We’ve been there several times this year. We’re members. We have no excuse. (note: Akron zoo has an awesome penguin pool which we’ve been to many times)
We saw an awful lot of scary parenting. To paraphrase a friend (Tif, I’m gesturing in your direction): why would you bring your kids to the zoo if you don’t like them? One particular incident comes to mind. Just as we arrived we hit the bathrooms. While doing my business, a woman was standing in the door way shouting at her son to go into this stall, then that stall then, “ah jesus forget it cause you’re too slow and now we ain’t waitin for another one.” Aside from encroaching on the sanctity of the men’s room, I became a target when she saw my surprised expression as I was leaving and decided to shout at me, “what you looking at?!” My next blog post, that’s what.
All the exhibits have a little plaque that shows where the animals live—coastal Australia, Central America, etc. None of these include Northeast Ohio which seems strange because that’s the only place I ever see zebras and wallabies.
A local WIC chapter had a booth showing 10 steps to successful breastfeeding. The severity of one of these surprised me: “Don’t smoke. Limit alcohol. Avoid medications and street drugs.” *Avoid street drugs? *That sounds more like a suggestion than a rule. (sorry for the blurrycam)

zooooom:

Raffles are really, really boring when you aren’t participating or interested in anything being raffled (it’s WBW week, after all)
Smokers are very annoying. Seriously: if a venue has designated smoking areas, please use them!
The zoo is exhausting but only kids are allowed to sleep (not fair!)

Maya can count (1, 2, 7, EIGHT!!!, 14, 1, 1, 1, 2, jump!)
If you ask Maya, all we saw today were birds. A duck, a goose, a zebra bird, a kangaroo bird, a doggie bird, a bird bird…

That’s all I have for zoo-related news today. Just to empty out the memory card, here’s a few unrelated ruminations:

I’m awesome at slicing bread. Like this is some sort of gift. You don’t believe me? This was sliced free-hand, I swear:

This tree (on Graham Rd in Stow) got screwed:

A single beehive can produce 100 pounds of honey each year, according to Sarah who heard it from a friend who has three such hives in her backyard. I guess we’re getting closer and closer to becoming hippies every day because I love honey…a lot…and now have to convince myself that I don’t want to take care of hundreds of stinging insects just to get it for cheap. I think we’ll just keep getting it from our honey-person (yes, we buy it direct from some cranky lady a few miles away…by the gallon, though soon we might get it from our hippie friend). Here’s how much I love honey—I have two honey bears which I refill from our gallon jug, but I also received this sweet dispenser as a gift last year:

And finally, after the zoo we found a this-end-up-fail on our doorstep: