2011 January 23 «

Our practically perfect day

I had planned on taking the kids to the aquarium over the long holiday weekend last week. Since I had to work instead, we headed there this morning. It was a ridiculously beautiful day at the coast today. We arrived and there were hundreds of harbor seals out, although the kids didn’t seem to notice. They looked a lot like rocks and weren’t making any noise, so I could see why they weren’t terribly impressed.

They thought the aquarium itself was far more fun. We saw nemo, sharks and an octopus and star fish. We went to see the jellyfish presentation, during which my children decided the presentation was supposed to be interactive. Oscar kept yelling “JELLYFISH . . . JELLIES . . . JELLLL LYYY FISH!!!” each time a new variety of jellyfish was shown and Etta would run from our seats to in front of the screen (below it, of course) to dance for the audience. The actual jellyfish exhibit afterward was a bit of a letdown, I imagine (for everyone, not just my kids).

After we’d been there a while, Etta said she wanted milk. Oscar reached down to her and patted her shoulder and said, “‘s okay . . . Donalds,” which means “it’s okay, we’ll go get your milk at McDonalds.” Nice.

Oscar even did me a favor and pushed Etta back to the car – the entire way back to the car. I hate paying for parking in suburban areas (I’m cheap), so we always find the free parking up the bike trail, and may I say, my son must be in great shape. He must have pushed that stroller close to a mile. Every time I would try to take over, he’d just push harder. His occupational therapist is going to be very excited about his “heavy work” today.

Our day would have been perfect, but our nemesis, Sensory Processing Disorder, made a somewhat dramatic appearance. Oscar used to hate sand. When we went to Playa del Carmen a year ago he would scream even if I would carry him across the beach. He can stand it a bit more now, but there was a lot of sand and tiny rocks on the bike path back to our car. Oscar would convince himself that he had rocks in his shoes and sit down and yell for me to help him. I’d clean out his shoe and wipe down his feet, showing him there was nothing in his shoes, but he could not register it. It made for a long walk to the car, but he made it on his own without a meltdown, so that’s definite progress.

And, after all that, we managed it home (our second almost two hour car ride today) without anyone crying, including me.