Weekending it

A little belated Weekending it recap and proof that not all adventures are worth it.

We are in a tough phase with the kids right now. Ivy is so quintessentially three and so all those things you hear about the "threenager phase" are true for her. So many opinions, emotions, outbursts. Our house is constantly filled with either crying or whining or both. It doesn't help that we cut her naps in order to help her sleep better at night. She still really needs a little nap in the day, but it's not worth it if it takes her 2+ hours to fall asleep at night. Sigh. Our biggest issue with her is clothing drama. She is suddenly very concerned about what she wears. It has to be pink and it usually needs a unicorn or rainbow on it. She will not wear anything else and it is a battle every day to convince her that she cannot wear the same shirt over and over. We have hundreds of dollars of unworn clothing in her closet that she will not touch. And even some of the pink/rainbow/unicorn outfits she does have she won't wear for some inexplicable reason. Even when we've committed to just letting her have full control over her outfit, she still has meltdowns. Today she had on a cute Christmas unicorn shirt (that she picked at the store). Ultimately she took it off because Kip wasn't wearing a Christmas outfit. 

I hope it's just a phase that we will get through and laugh about later, but in this moment it's really tough. 

Anyways, back to the weekend. Our original plan was to do nothing. The kids have had pretty privileged behavior lately when we take them to fun outings so we decided we just won't go anywhere. But on Saturday evening the kids wanted to go to the lights display at the zoo and us adults wanted to as well. We've never been and it is a free event so we decided to risk it. We stopped at Shack Shake for dinner which resulted in Ivy throwing a fit in the middle of the restaurant because she decided (after a full day without issue) that the pants she was wearing were not cute and needed to change. NOW. Once we got back in the car she calmed down a bit (no outfit change involved). But then we hit a ton of traffic on a Saturday night. It took us 45 minutes to get there and then another 15 minutes looking for parking because the whole state of New Jersey decided to see the zoo lights the same night as us. We ended up finding a spot in the overflow to the overflow parking and then walked 15 minutes to get to the zoo. They didn't ticket or cap capacity at all so the place was literally packed. I have not been in a crowd so dense since being in Times Square pre-pandemic. It was almost impossible to navigate around the crowd in the dark. We saw about four animals, took a few photos with the lights and then left. We were barely at the zoo for an hour. 1,000% not worth it but at least we didn't spend money on tickets and the kids requested photos so I never turn those down. 

Parenting...the holidays...making up for lost time and taking risks for memorable adventures...it's a precarious balance.

The kids fell asleep on the way home but transferred seamlessly from the car to the couch into pjs and then bed.