Too Gutsy

I took Zach for a walk in the woods Sunday and found an enormous hollow oak tree on it's side.  He actually fit into the log and wanted to crawl through it.  I was struck at the willingness to jump in and do things that I wouldn't want to do, but part of that is the lack of experience of childhood.  Who's to say our fears and aversions are right?  I try to remember to error on the side of letting him live his life and not be a paranoid helicopter parent.

We went to the Elk Enclosure and were putting carrots through the fence to the young bull elk.  It was cold and Zach got bored quickly.  "I'm through with the elk" he said, announcing his desire to move on.

This morning, it was about 23°F and I was trying to get him dressed.  As usual, he saw the situation as a game where baby tries to run away and daddy struggles (hilariously, to him) to put on the clothes!  I hate it, but it's hard to get mad because he's giggling like a little crazy man and having a blast.  So this morning, I got his PJ shirt off, and couldn't get the day shirt on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without a shirt?"  No! He let me put the shirt on.  I got his PJ bottoms off and he was naked, but he wouldn't let me put his underware on.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana with your potty pee hanging out?" No! He let me put his underware on.  Pants proved to be more difficult.  "Do you want to go to Kidz Kabana without pants?"  "I don't wanna wear pants!  I wanna wear shorts!"  Explaining to Zach that it was cold out didn't make a dent.  Maybe he had to experience the cold to understand.  OK, shorts on and out the door (he had a coat and shoes on).  I had his long pants ready, but every time I asked if he wanted them on, he said no.  We got all the way to Kidz Kabana without him caving in.  I understand three things: 1) the lesson was mine 2) when you don't have to spend much time outside, it's not that tough to wear shorts for the time it takes to get in the car and for the car to warm up 3) maybe he's just tougher than I thought.

I explained that it was a lesson that backfired and left him at Kidz Kabana in shorts.  We'll see what he's wearing when it's time to pick him up.

OUT OF PICTURE SPACE!

I tried to post another blog entry from the Colorado vacation and got a disturbing message.

I have used up my free picture space!  So now, I plan on making a little self published book, then purging the older entries off the web.

The book will probably be Animal Tales 1, pulling all the old entries from back to the first entry about my Visitor Snake on June 5, 2007, 5½ years ago to however long it takes to fill up a little book.  Since the first entry, we've been on many vacations and welcomed Zach into the world, so a lot has changed.

Unfortunately, one change that may have hastened this delay in the standard was the purchasing of a new camera at the beginning of the vacation.  The picture file size jumped up and I wonder if it was a coincidence that the end of the available space hit at about that time.  The quality of the photos went up, so it was more tempting for me to put more photos in, too.

So it's time to dial back, do a little written entries with no pics for a while, and then get back on track after I put together my book project.

Thanks for watching.