zoo

we went to the zoo on monday. great fun! the kids especially liked the giraffes, penguins, rhino, and tigers. the giraffes were right up close to us and they were SO BIG! i didn't realize giraffes were that big. enormous. maggie kept saying "wow!"

the zoo also had a fantastic playground and surprisingly good, while unsurprisingly overpriced, french fries (one of maggie's new words by the way). i'm downloading pics right now, but since we took a lot, it's taking a while. nick and i keep disagreeing about how many photos is too many. i say there is no such thing as too many photos of our beautiful chillins, he says they take up too much space (that would be e-space for you older readers. these days, "the pictures are taking up too much space" has nothing to do with the bookcase. ah how times change!).

now we're just getting ready to head home! nina really misses maine. i told her we were going back to NY tomorrow and she said 'no we're not! we're going back to maine!' the panic! i corrected myself.

so, we are in the princess phase full-throttle. i think being around all these castle ruins and palaces is feeding the frenzy. i had to call nina cinderella today. maggie was princess aurora (that's sleeping beauty's name for all you non-princess immersed folk), while i got the pleasure of responding to "evil stepmother" or sometimes, just "evil mother." like, "evil mother, princess aurora wants some water." maggie's happy to be princess aurora today though--yesterday, nina was snow white and maggie was dopey. dopey! i told nina that maggie should be happy instead, but nina pointed out that dopey and maggie both don't talk... ouch. poor maggie! i have no idea how she learned about the whole snow white story line, we haven't seen the movie. of course, the best ("best") was when i warned nina that if she didn't listen to me, i was going to put her in time out, and she responded, "you can't put me in time out, i'm a princess." oh! oma and i looked at each other and tried very hard not to laugh (and succeeded!). i swear, nina must have had some ideas about how 4 year olds act, because she started acting differently when she turned 4. and true to her promise, she gave up nuk! we're very proud of her for that, of course. she still falls asleep with it, but no nuk all day long. awww!

wow, the photos are just over half way downloaded. well, i will try to put some zoo pics up when they're done, but first i have to clean up the kitchen.

i will call tomorrow after we land mom!