A Friday With Eric

Okay "Papa" just grabbed Melanie's laptop to take over for a bit. She wants me to write a bit about Eric and my trek to the Brackenridge Park to go to the Zoo Train, and, surprise, surprise, the zoo. Eric enjoys going to the zoo almost half as much as he enjoys riding on the train, which says a lot. I have learned that the best thing to do is make short trips to the zoo after our train ride (the train ride always comes first!). I find that 1-2 hours works out well. We don't get to see everything in one trip, but we have a family membership so short visits work out very well. Today we saw some of the bears and we went to the "Africa Live" exhibit at the San Antonio Zoo. In a new twist, Eric seemed to be more interested in the fish he saw in the tanks than in some of the animals.

One of the key features at the San Antonio zoo is a bronze statue of a pride of lions near the entrance. Eric was acting very tired when we started heading out, but when he saw other kids playing on the statues he lit up and wanted to play on them too. Of course, he didn't want any pictures, so I kept shooting away until he finally dealt with it and actually looked at me once in a while. After all, I like to earn points with my lovely wife...

Well, well, I guess it takes me a long time to type because Melanie has fallen asleep with me still typing into her blog, oh, the things I could do. This picture is a quick shot she took tonight during Eric's bathtime. He now loves baths and wants one every night which is a good thing in a 3-year old with a penchant for investigating every dirt-covered item he can find. He has begun playing with some bathtoys he received a long time ago. When he first received these building blocks he played with them as simple floating toys, now he is happy to spend a LONG time in the tub building various structures with the many shapes that are included.

Okay, this is Melanie taking over again. Thanks to my "guest blogger" for writing the above post. I just wanted to add that in the above picture, Eric described that the above rounded object as a "big old egg". We're not sure why he had to insert the "old" in there, but it's always amazing to hear his language developing.

Patrick also forgot to include that Eric didn't say goodbye to Anthony again when they dropped Anthony off at school this morning. This time it was because Eric had fallen asleep in the car trip there. He woke up shortly before arriving back home. They had originally planned to go to the gym, but Patrick couldn't go because Eric was asleep. When Eric woke up, he still wanted to go to the gym. Patrick compromised with him by telling him they could go ride the train and then the zoo. Thank goodness distraction techniques still work with the little man!

Tomorrow we have a busy morning. The boys both have soccer games at almost the same time. Patrick will take Alex and Eric to Alex's game (at 10am at Alamo Sportsplex). Anthony will get a ride to his game from one of his teammate's parents (at 11am at Jumbo Evans). I will take Natalie to her Contemporary Festival (10am to 1pm at UTSA). We'll all meet up again at home in the afternoon and hopefully get to go to "Wurstfest"--more details on all of this tomorrow.