Too long in the car

I jinxed myself last night when I mentioned Bohdin doesn't wake me up in the morning because this morning he did. I had him go to the kitchen to check the time and it was 6:18. I decided to take advantage of opportunity and try to catch the 10:15 flight. I had to put our name on the standby list, get a rental car reservation, and finish packing. My goal was to be out of the house by 7am. That would allow two hours to make the one hour drive to the airport. We would be hitting rush hour traffic and doubling the time seemed reasonable. It would have been but we didn't leave at 7. We left at 7:20. It did indeed take us two hours to get to the airport because traffic sucked. No accidents just the usual sucky commuting traffic around here. I unloaded us out of the car as fast as possible to catch the bus. We watched it drive by. I thought maybe we could catch it further down but Nyla was moving slower than a three legged turtle. Actually she was moving just as fast as our car earlier in the trip. It was too late anyway. We needed at least an additional 20 minutes to make it for our flight. We sat down on the curb and Bohdin and I cried. I hate Dulles and driving to Dulles. It was such a disappointment.

We got back in the car and I thought we could check out the annex of the Air and Space Museum which is near the airport. I missed my exit to head north and headed south east instead. I've made this mistake before. It is a long long way before an opportunity to turn around comes up. I decided since we were heading towards downtown we would go to the zoo instead. Traffic sucked. There are red lights every 50 yards and they are timed so you hit every one. It took us over an hour. We got to the zoo and Bohdin got the cotton candy he has been craving for months. I don't really like cotton candy and neither does Nyla so Bohdin had it all to himself although he did keep trying to share it with Nyla. It's almost the end of the school year and there were a hundred buses there. The zoo was packed and the child to adult ratio seemed to be 1:10. Bohdin was shoved and bumped around a bit since there were so many kids trying to look in a small window. Nyla never got bumped because she always made her way to the front. Her presence was always known. Bohdin hung out in the back and kids were surprised he was there. We didn't stay long.

Bohdin and Nyla fell asleep on the way back. Another hour in the car. I stopped at Burger King once we got on post because it was after one o'clock and we had only snacked on things in the car so far that day. After that was the commissary for something for dinner. We finally made it home after 3 o'clock. It was a long pointless day. The kids were glad to be home to play with toys. Bohdin discovered a balloon and pump I had bought for the trip. He tried it out in the house and then we decided to take it to the playground. Some kids immediately congregated around him wanting turns. Of course Bohdin shared. There were four kids but two left pretty soon. The two that remained were almost 6 and 6. They seemed way older than Bohdin. He did talk to them and sort of had a good time. Bohdin is not very good at sticking up for himself so sometimes he didn't get as many turns. At one point he started crying. The kids asked me and him why he was crying. I can't remember what it was now. Maybe he didn't catch the balloon or they skipped his turn. Anyway he really needs to learn to speak his mind. Too bad he doesn't feel comfortable speaking to them the way he speaks to Nyla. I left the kids after a while because I didn't want to play turn referee. I couldn't remember whose turn it was either. I took Nyla to the swings and watched Bohdin. They seemed to do okay. Bohdin cried again at one point but he didn't come over to me and it looked like it was resolved quickly. He also played some other stuff with the boy that was almost 6. A cool toy icebreaker was successful to get Bohdin talking to other kids. We'll try it again sometime.

In the butterfly room
 

Bohdin wanted me to take a picture of this
 

He also wanted me to take a picture of the sea serpent and wondered why he was in the picture also.
 

Nyla was more interested in the kimodo dragon than Bohdin. I thought the coolest things we saw were the gorillas and blue crabs. Nyla liked all of the babies at the zoo.
 

There were two things I forgot to mention about yesterday. Nyla can open the refrigerator by herself now. Yesterday she took the egg carton out and cracked two eggs into a bowl. She's not a huge fan of eating eggs but she loves cooking eggs. Luckily I rescued the last two so I could use them for the banana bread.

Nyla wanted to make popcorn last night, another favorite activity. She had the popcorn popper full of popcorn when she tripped and popcorn kernels went flying everywhere. Bohdin offered to sweep it up. I was putting toys away while he swept and I heard him mutter under his breath that "We should get a shark vac". Bohdin loves to watch infomercials and that morning I heard him watching an infomercial in the other room early in the morning. When I asked him about it today he couldn't remember the name of the product but he was able to tell me all of the things it could do.