good news: today I took the kids to the zoo. We were a tad late as our new cleaning person didn’t show up when she said she would and we had to wait. But not too bad, we got there and walked the path over to the picnic tables to have lunch first. We were meeting up with my friend and her kids too. She had an extra kid with her to help out another friend, lets call him M.

bad news: that then meant we had 7 kids on two adults, as we each have three of our own. 5 years and under.

good news: two of those children are babies and can’t walk. We had a nice lunch and then attempted the cleanup.

bad news: children have to use the restroom after eating.

good news: two adults! we decide to divide and conquer. Boys go first, two of them.

bad news: girls need to pee too, and the zoo is crowded so this is taking a long time.

good news: of the four children i am watching only two can walk.

bad news: one of those children is M, an only child not used to child-herd rules and requirements — despite him being briefed on those before arriving at the zoo.

good news: the zoo only has one entrance and exit.

bad news: zoo has lots of dangerous animals and exhibits.

good news: i did not loose one of my own children.

bad news: M walked away somehow without me seeing.

good news: woman with three larger children of her own sees me freak out and offers to stay with remaining three children.

bad news: i have to tell my friend i lost her friends kid, and look for him. Running through the zoo feeling like such an idiot.

good news: I think to go tell the people at the entrance.

bad news: they ask me what he’s wearing, his name and age. All I can say is blond boy age two or three.

good news: I get back to the other kids and my friend has found M. Yay happy ending!

Find out later he walked up to another random mom and asked for snacks, she asked where his mommy was and he couldn’t answer so she just kept still with him till my friend got there. Going through the rest of the zoo we saw how he got away from me, he just kept running away from us with no regard for where we might be or be headed. We put the 5 year olds on a ‘secret mission’ to keep him with us an that helped a bit. That was not so fun. At least our own kids have learned the kid-herd requirements of mostly staying together!

This entry was posted on Monday, August 12th, 2013 at 8:51 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.