Zoo clas, Day 2, and Ice Skating, Day 1 (tons of pics)

Zoo class went incredibly well today. Nico was ready to go right into the building and I had to tell him that it wasn't time yet so let's go see some other animals. He took it well but was quite happy to leave the animals for class time when I said so. No fights, no arguments, no tantrums. We went in and he immediately settled in over at the sand table with a little girl and they played very nicely together filling up some buckets using spoons. The only issue was when it was clean up time and he had a different idea of how to clean up that area than the teacher did. LOL Circle time was still a bunch of clinging to mom but towards the end he was participating a little in between being a cling-on. He ran right over to the tables with the other kids for art time and shared feathers very well with Alex. He cleaned up quickly and nicely. I'm not sure what happened but I walked over to the circle room again and found Nico making silly faces in the mirror and then Alex hitting him in the back. The other parents swore that Nico didn't do anything so I'm just glad he didn't instigate or retaliate. He participated in the animal life activity but still wasn't into the whole music time thing. He was pretty good at snack time but I had to keep poking my head out to deal with the big boys so he would have to come see what I was doign so that was more disruptive than I would have liked. (note to self, pack things other than schoolwork for Jonathan unless he can complete it independently) He started getting a little antsy when it was time for the animal visitor and just wanted to go outside or read a book. I let him look at a book on my lap but the second the turtle actually came to visit, he perked up until after his turn to pet it. Then he went back to his book and when I tried to read it to him and Benjamin who was sitting next to us, he told me no and went and got a book for Ben and then handed a few more out to some of the other kids before I could get him to come back with me. We all went together to go see the penguins today and he was hanging out with the other children watching the birds swim.
After that we were still waiting for Mike to join us so we headed over to the train for a ride and Nico had the biggest grin since we were going on the choo-choo. Mike joined us after our ride and we took a tour through the new Bear Gully since Mike hadn't seen it and then headed for lunch which provided us with an interesting game of defend your food from the vultures seagulls. I've decided we are ALWAYS eating at the Leaping Lemur Cafe from now on since it has the only indoor dining area.Now what the boys had been bugging for since last week, ice skating....

I have to say they all did really well. Christopher used to play ice hockey and still loves to roller blade so that wasn't a huge surprise but it was hard because these were figure skates with the toe pick. I don't understand why they give figure skates when it's easy to transfer from figure to hockey but not so easy to go from hockey to figure. *shrug* Matthew hasn't been on the ice in ages and I think Jonathan was Nico's age last time he went out and of course, Nico's never been. Matthew only fell twice since he was approaching it in a much calmer manner and going for the slow but steady (and not falling down) way of doing things. Jonathan was going full tilt which meant a lot more falling but he was doing really well and skated the length of the rink several times without falling and at a decent speed. Nico was wearing special training skates I bought back when Christopher was his age that are like old-fashioned roller skates that adjust to fit over your shoe but have 4 little blades rather than wheels. They all had a great time and there was much laughing and shouting of "I did it!" from the three younger ones. My greatest accomplishment was not falling at all even when I had kids in either hand who both fell at the same time. It's already been decided we need to go again next week after Nico's class.

Unfortunately the end of our zoo trip did not go as well. Jonathan didn't fully close the tailgate when we got the stroller out so the dome light must have stayed on the whole time we were in the zoo (about 5hrs) so we got back to a dead battery. Apparently no one in SF carries any jumper cables and Mark has our only set in the Escort. I didn't have my AAA card on me so had to call them and ask them to look me up except they have my name misspelled so it's a huge production for them to look me up because they can't look up by address. Ugh! Thankfully once they found me in the system (20min later) it was only a few minutes before the calvary showed up to give us a jump and send us on our way.

Coming home to a house filled with the scent of cooked corned beef soon chased away any crabby moods and I set about getting the carrots and potatoes in to cook with the meat and we all sat down to watch a movie and kick it and that's pretty much what we've done with the rest of our night.