First Dance

After a couple weeks of waiting along with some drama, the day of Natalie’s first dance finally arrived. I was fortunate enough she allowed me to attend as the fun police and chaperone the dance. At first she felt 100% awkward and I was nervous she would just float around and look miserable the whole time but thankfully she warmed up and had a good time. She took tons of photos at the photo set and danced a lot more than I expected (which I expected zero dancing). Now at almost 9pm we are at the school park while she plays with friends. I am so proud of her for being social because I know it’s hard for her. She got ready with a friend and that friends mom even took them to get their hair done which was totally unexpected but so so nice! 

 

National Zoo

I remember Natalie’s first zoo trip ten years ago when she was eight months old. We rode the metro with my sister, my sisters then boyfriend and my friend and her son. Matt and I took Nat there several more times, sometimes on the metro, sometimes driving. I even took her on the metro all by myself one day, which even ten years later seems a little intimidating to me. When I was super pregnant with Vana I chaperoned a field trip there in the scorching heat. Today started off cloudy and cool and we on a whim decided to take her. We knew parking would be a pain but we got semi lucky and found a spot someone was pulling out of but it wasn’t super close to the zoo. It was definitely our best bet though. As expected V wasn’t interested in animals much at all. She liked the gorillas and said she liked the flamingos. We found some cool stuff for her anyway including an amazing kids room with sensory play. She got ice cream (twice), rode the carousel and got soaked playing in an overhead sprinkler to help visitors cool down. It was so crazy crowded and there wasn’t much activity from the animals so that was a tiny disappointing but overall I’d say a great first trip! Definitely better than the trip I’ll be making again Friday with my job. I get to be responsible for roughly 10 two and three year olds at the freaking crowded zoo. Granted, there are parents and I have coworkers but the first field trip we took to the children’s museum was awful. I wasn’t even with the youngest group that day and we had only five kids to look after and still it was completely miserable. The kids couldn’t even enjoy it because the adults were so stressed out and we made everyone stay tightly together after a scare that one kid was lost (he went off with another student and their parent but the parent didn’t let us know). I really dread this field trip but am trying not to stress too much about it.