Day Ten

We took another day off from travel today and hung around Tulsa, Oklahoma. Henry and I woke up first and tiptoed out for breakfast downstairs just the two of us, which was nice. When everyone was up and fed we hit the road to check out the Tulsa Zoo. Josh and I have been to a lot of zoos with the boys (York Zoo, Franklin Park, Roger Williams, Bronx, probably others I am missing) and this was by far the best. It was relatively inexpensive to get in ($29 total for all of us), the animal areas had great visibility, many areas were indoor viewing and had blasting air conditioning (it was about 95 outside so this was much appreciated!), it wasn't crowded at all, and had a great variety of animals including many we don't see at zoos in New England. Our favorite animals were as follows:

• Josh: Tortoise (they were huge and moved remarkably quickly!) 
• Sarah: Chimpanzee (THEY swung from the ceiling!!!!!)
• Henry: Komodo Dragon ("because it was smelling everything with his tongue") 
• Teddy: Turtles (his original answer was T-Rex?) 

We spent the afternoon having attempted "quiet time" in the hotel room which mostly consisted of Josh and I trying to take naps (mostly unsuccessful) and the boys watching various shows, eating snacks, and jumping all over us. We got Mexican food from a place across the street this afternoon that was delicious, the boys had pizza, and we swam tonight. A lady in the elevator today told me that yesterday was the hottest day in Oklahoma in 6 years, it was 106 or something. I will say with the humidity much less than New England (today for example Tulsa humidity was about 35 and Nashua was 80), the heat is significantly more tolerable. One of the concerns we all had about moving to California, specifically the area we will be in which is primarily desert), was the heat. Both of us were worried we would probably melt into a big Manheim puddle and never be seen again. The heat here has been reassuring though that as Gloria Gainor said best... we will survive!

The boys both were pretty great today. The zoo is really their happy place, they love jumping in and out of the stroller, looking up-close at animals, and just seeing the animals in their environment (or at least the zoo's version of the animal's environment). By the end of the day the boys can barely keep their eyes open, but fight it and stay up much later than they normally would. A close friend gave me some advice when Henry was little and it has been the piece of motherhood advice that I have really connected with the most. She also has 2 young boys that are 2 years apart. She told me that there are two things you cannot ever make your children do: eat and sleep. And if you stop fighting with them about these two things your parenting journey will be much easier. Obviously there are some times when you need to push these issues but for the most part, this has been a real saving grace for raising these boys. Whether they finish their chicken nuggets or finish their strawberries is really not worth the fight. There will always be options (ex: you get dessert if you finish your dinner) which leaves them able to decide what they want to do, and I think this really works for us. Or it just makes our lives less stressful, and it's survival mode so who the hell cares. 

Tomorrow we hit the road and will be driving to Texas! We got a little ahead of ourselves early on in our trip with some lengthy back-to-back travel days, and our rental in California does not start for 6 more days, so these days off have been very nice, and really benefited all of us. 

Stay tuned! <3