Zoo trek

• home education

[minor pseudonymising edits during Drupal to hugo migration for all the good that will do now]

Today was a good day, even if the public transport was a bit of a malarky.

Woke up in the morning, got myself and Tiny breakfast (weetbix with full cream milk, chopped strawberries and half a banana each) and switched the tv to ABC kids. Tiny had a minor tantrum when he found out JJ had gone to walk the dog without him, but quickly got over it when he noted it wasn’t getting much reaction from me and watched TV, not touching his breakfast.

I made egg and ham sandwiches to take to the zoo (two for me, one without crusts and cut up into four triangles for Tiny), two bananas, and chopped up some cheese and carrot sticks. I even remembered to take the big bottle of water.

Changed Tiny’s nappy, dressed him, put Smidge on the potty where she did a big wee, put the dog out, got Sprat to hold the door for me and left.

Sprat joined me later at the bus stop as her bus was due the same time as mine. Both buses were late but hers came before mine did. Bus finally came, hopped aboard, headed in to Perth. No problem there.

We finally got a look at the Convention Centre as the bus pulled in to the Esplanade bus port. I’m sure it’s fairly stable but parts of it looked remarkably precarious and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t find it all that attractive. Hope it’s a lot nicer on the inside than it is on the outside.

Pulled into the bus port and of course the first thing I discover is that the lateness of the first bus made us miss the connecting bus. No problem, we’ll wait for the next one. Oh wait, there is a problem, the next bus on the route past the zoo is an old one. Can’t get on. Never mind, wait for the next one. That’s also an old one.

Tiny is getting impatient by this point so I blew off the whole bus thing, went up to the information centre on the concourse above and asked if there were other ways of getting to the zoo that didn’t involve buses. I got given a ferry timetable and directions to the Barrack St jetty. We trotted on over there, with me being very glad of the all terrain wheels as I strained across the park. Karma decided to hit immediately for me this time round as the ferry runs every half hour and there was one sitting there when we got to the jetty. Got aboard, chugged across the river and deposited at the other jetty.

Cut across another park to the zoo, got in, and went straight to the park area to see if I could find the homeschool group. They weren’t there, so I took Tiny to the playground and let him have a play and some lunch. I ate my sandwiches, he had nibbles of his and some carrot and cheese sticks. Got him to put his sandals back on ad we went off searching for tigers and elephants seeing as that’s what he wanted to see.

Found the elephants first which got him excited, then went to see the tiger. The tiger was pacing its enclosure, Tiny paced along with it, then I managed to convince him to watch it for a while as I changed his nappy again.

We went and checked out the gibbons and the orang utans, and while wandering towards the tortoises who should we encounter but the homeschool group. Knew I’d find them eventually if I kept wandering long enough.

Smidge was sound asleep through all this.

We doubled back to the elephants and orang utans, the pleasantly tired Tiny finding a second wind playing with his friends. Stopped by the cafe which was a bit overpriced but at least the milkshake was big and chocolatey.

[and I got interrupted while writing this]

I remember having good chats with the other homeschoolers, we got rained on which woke Tiny up and he was quite unhappy about it. Must remember to put the rain shield in. We went and saw the crocodile before leaving. Only 4.6m long, just a little one ;)

Lucked out with the ferry again, there was one sitting there ready to go when we reached the jetty and I sprinted for it even though you’re not meant to run with the twin pram, and Smidge was in the sling. Made it fine and also didn’t have to wait too long for the bus back home.

Also only needed to change two nappies each coz Tiny now has a bigger bladder and Smidge went to the toilet each time except for one I missed because we were on some mode of transport and one that wasn’t actually missed, but she’d leaked a touch before I got her to a toilet.

Hot shower when we got home for me and Smidge, Tiny didn’t want one. I could have used a longer hotter one, I was kind of sore all over.

Notched up my self confidence by quite a lot ^_^

Now we’re trying to work out where to go for our next excursion :)

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License