The Weekend Outing

January is a slow month for birthdays. Other than Amanda's in the middle of the month I don't recall too many weekend s taken up other than the Super Bowl, New Years and Amanda's birthday week. So this weekend was open and the weather was nice we took the girls to the zoo.
Our local zoo is kinda cool.
Open and grand, usually too large for a band,
to parade and always be heard, past the large elephant herd.

Sorry for the Doctor Seuss fart. Too many children books. But we did go the the zoo in Miami that just opened a new area called the Amazon. Which seems small on the map but it has a ton of animals, serpents, fish, and reptiles. Our plan was to get there before lunch. Hit the new Amazon area, eat then go home. About a 3 hour visit. Which happened but we had to rush through the last part of the Amazon since Liana was hungry, food, me eat, hungry, snack, candy? I have a lot of great pictures of the Harpy Eagle, poisonous dart frogs no bigger than your thumb. They also have a sting ray petting area. I was hoping for a piranha petting area but some think they actually eat people. They don't we had one as a kid. My brother Tom always had unique pets at home and I remember feeding and petting our piranha. He was only about 6 inches but I was only 10 or 12 so my finger must have looked like Turkey legs, if in fact they were food. Anyways the entire new part of the zoo is very kid friendly. Everything is at their level. Even Liana could jump up on a ledge and sit to view a snake, lizard, or animal. It felt like the Atlanta aquarium, which has to be the best kid friendly, exhibit area. I will post the pictures as soon as I take them from the hard drive. We headed home for a Liana nap and a milk pumping around 3pm.

At 5:30 Amanda and I raced to the hospital for the 6 to 6:30 visiting window. Amanda kept badgering me to hold Alexandra. "Can I hold her? Do you think I can hold her? I hope I can hold her. Maybe the will let me hold her. It will be really cute if I could hold her. Maybe THIS time I can hold her. Please, let me hold her. Awe she is soooo cute with the bow, can I hold her? Maybe just for a minute I can hold her..." AHHHHHHHHHHH I get the point Amanda. She would badger me from the time we were in the car until we were next to Alexandra. Non-stop. It sounded like I was on a road trip and my Dad was asking when we were going to eat? And then the kids would badger when are we going to get there. So our nurse was very busy as the NICU had only 3 people inside working. Shift change was about to occur so they were very busy trying to finish. I was asked to take her temperature and change her diaper. So when the nurse came by I asked if Amanda could hold her. "I'm not sure ..." was the response. "Can Amanda hold her for a minute?" Let me ask your nurse Anette. So Amanda finally got onto the wave I started "Ooooh please, nurse. I only want to hold her for a minute. She's sooooo cute with that bow." And then she laid it on thick ... "awe, I never get to hold her. WHY?"

"Because, I don't know why" was my real answer, right next to the nurse. "Liana will never get to see her so you should feel lucky just being here next to her."

That caught the nurse's attention. She explained a similar incident with her child who couldn't visit. And how the hospital wants to change the visiting rules for siblings. She must have had a change of heart or just got tired of us badgering her but Amanda was allowed to hold her sister. It was nice to see her light up and talk to Alexandra up close. The time was brief. We were in and out within 30 minutes but the Abuela-like persistence paid off and the two sisters were able to share some quiet time. BTW, Alexandra is now at 3 lbs 6 oz, which is over the average Publix rotisserie chicken. We are now moving to the ham with a bone weight comparison.