Bring my sons from afar...: Petting Zoo

Though it was actually part of the Day Out With Thomas event, the petting zoo was an event in an of itself worthy of a blog post. Normally I steer clear of petting zoos because I've heard too many bad things about small children picking up E. Coli and other germs from the animals. However, this particular petting zoo had so many animals! I thought it would be so much fun for the kids I just couldn't resist this time.

With Malachi being a year younger than Caleb he often has to watch as Caleb gets to enjoy something he doesn't. Caleb gets to play baseball while Malachi watches. Caleb gets cool new clothes, while Malachi wears Caleb's outgrown ones (and when Caleb was that little he wasn't into Superman, Ironman, and Star Wars so Malachi gets unhappy about not having superhero clothes like Caleb's new ones). Caleb gets to enjoy toys that are sometimes too complicated for Malachi. Caleb gets to stay up when Malachi has to take a nap. When Caleb had a birthday Malachi felt particularly upset, even though we didn't have a party and we made sure Malachi got to do everything Caleb did. In lots of ways lately it just feels to Malachi as though Caleb gets all the fun. Thus, at the petting zoo when I bought a cup of animal food for Caleb I ended up having to get one for Malachi too even though I knew we didn't need that much food.

Well, it didn't take long to learn just how much I had wasted the money on that cup for Malachi (which I had known would be the case, but I figured it was worth $1 to keep him from feeling left out). As soon as we got in there, the animals headed to the food and poor Malachi was terrified! It took a great deal of effort on my part to get him to stop running away and crying. He finally held the cup for a few moments to let some animals eat, but he never really relaxed and was more than happy to get on out of there. Thankfully Caleb did enjoy feeding the animals and fed lots of different ones. However, with respect to a donkey that was in there, Caleb told me, "I didn't feed that horse because it was making too much noise!"

My own experience in the petting zoo was a bit less than desirable. It was quite crowded with animals, kids, and parents. At one point I stooped down to get a better picture of Malachi feeding an animal and got bumped so that I fell onto my knee to catch myself. As soon as I felt something warm and moist I knew it couldn't be good. I had of course had the great luck of landing in fresh animal poop, and since I had on light colored capri pants it was real obvious. As if the nasty mess on my pants wasn't bad enough, the rest of the day Malachi kept trying to hold to me by grabbing onto that one particular spot. As I worried about all the germs I was carrying on my pants and how those germs could affect him with his heart condition, I couldn't help but remember why I never go into petting zoos!

Malachi was not near so excited about the animals as they were over that food!

If you notice, in every picture Malachi's free hand is held back to his side, an indication of how nervous he was around these animals. He didn't stay too long before he headed back out to Grandma.