Going to The Zoo

Big animals, little animals. None were caged and most were allowed to roam free. However, not of the 4-legged variety. Nope, this was IKEA on a public holiday.

We got there at 10:35am and there was a sea of cars in the parking lot already.

Abang made a bee line for the children’s section to play with the toys. There was no way Adik was going to sit in his stroller for much longer, too much fun to be had!

I’ve always been amazed at little children – girls, especially – who can sit there quietly and play with a toy for a long time, that is, more than 5 minutes. Mine will take the toy where you hammer the nails in and after 2 nails will decide that it’s much more fun to hammer the table instead. Or, hammer a different toy. Or, like Adik, who took a stool, moved it away from the table, set it behind this lady who was playing with her daughter, and grabbed on to her dress while trying to STAND on the stool! I had been distracted looking out for Abang and didn’t realise Adik had done that. At least the lady looked amused and didn’t give me one of those icy Can-You-Please-Control-Your-Child stares.

Oh no, that came later.

When it was time for the boys to have some lunch, we headed to the restaurant. Abang was playing nicely at the restaurant play area so at 11:25 Adik and I joined the rather short queue waiting for the hot meals to be served.

They were late and Adik wasn’t going to sit still being carried by his Mummy. He had places to go (snaking around people’s legs), people to see (the ones who own those legs, I guess). I tried to distract him with a spoon – too noisy – then with serviettes – too messy – and finally he just tipped my tray over. No food, but lots of serviettes and cutlery flying around. 15 minutes of queuing up was just too much to bear for a restless 14 month old. So I tried some roughhousing instead.

What a mistake. Not only did Adik’s giggles intermingled with whining earn me The Stare, the roughhousing actually made his diapers slip downwards. Just as we were about to be served, I bent down to tickle him and realised with horror that his entire trousers was soaked! Oh, cr*p. (Not literally, thank goodness.)

After changing Adik in the baby room while muttering and grumbling to myself, we decided to leave and poor Abang had to make do with curry puff instead of spaghetti.

Lessons learnt: a) Stick to non-public holiday weekdays and, b) Arrive after 11:30am but before 12pm, i.e. before the zoo opens.