Guess Who Went?

In the end, we took two little people on our weekend away to D.C. We decided a few weeks ago that I would probably bring Elijah since JD would have already been gone for five days, and as he said, "Dad misses me; Dad wants to see me!" By about Wednesday, it was decided for sure that he was coming since he was constantly asking for his Daddy to come home. Then, there was all the Julia drama and we decided that it would be too traumatic to leave her behind as well. I'm really glad we took them; it was still a very nice and peaceful weekend away. The nice thing is that the kids that stayed home would have prefered to stay home with Aunt Deb than be drug from monument to monument. This morning Julia kind of realized that she missed the Aunt Deb time that she could have had and told me that next time, she wants to stay home with Aunt Deb. We'll see, Julia, we'll see!

After paying $11 an hour to park on Friday evening, we decided to take public transportation. On Saturday morning, we took the hotel shuttle to the metro, the metro to the spot that it shut down for repair, a bus around the construction area, another metro into D.C., switched line colors and then headed to the zoo. All together, the travel still took almost two full hours! There is really just no quick way to get around D.C. (or New York city!) Of course, we had to reverse all that to get back in the evening.

Julia and Elijah were train riding pros by the end of the first day! There were several times that we boarded packed trains and didn't have seats. There was one especially crowded ride that I had to hold a folded stroller with one hand and the pole with the other, Julia held the pole herself and little Elijah just held on to my leg for dear life. If you are wondering, there were always able bodied men sitting in seats watching the kids and not once did one ever offer their seat to me or the kids. I'm afraid chivalry in the District of Colombia is a thing of the distant path. (There was one man on the first bus that did offer me his seat; I had no idea at that point how rare that would be.)

Julia and Elijah got along so well and really enjoyed each others company. I don't think the "normal" family realizes how easy it is to just juggle two kids. We had several people comment how bad they felt for us with the kids and the strollers up and down the escalators and on and off the trains, (we had to unload and fold them each time.) We usually didn't tell them that this was our idea of a peaceful break!

Look at Julia holding Elijah's hand while we waited for the train.

While we saw tons of stuff, the high-light for the kids was the D.C. Zoo. It was perfect weather and while we had been there a year ago, they didn't remember much. When we told Elijah that we were going to the zoo, he jumped up and down and yelled, "that's a good idea!"

Here's Elijah leaving the zoo; he held in there until we saw the last animal - the kamodo dragon. While Elijah was completely enamoured with it, Julia broke the bad news to him that it didn't have wings, so she didn't think it could fly. He didn't care, he's still asking to go back and see the "modo" dragon.

As I'm finishing typing this, Elijah is standing by asking to please do back to the zoo now. I realize how my greatest joy comes from watching them do things more than doing things myself.