Field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion
Today a few of us from The Club drove into the city for a field trip to the Butterfly Pavilion with the kids. It's basically an insect zoo thats also serves as a small children's museum. This is the perfect day for a boy to be a boy, looking at gross bugs & climbing all over things, with friends no less.
We got there shortly after they opened, only to realize that we possibly chose the wrong day to come. It was packed with school field trips, tons of different schools, with bratty, rude children that needed to learn some serious manners. Now, I get on Logan about behaving in public & learning his manners, but he's two. Not eight. An eight year old has the mental capability to know that shoving little kids away from exhibits, hip checking parents with strollers out of the way or giving parents dirty looks because they are making sure their little ones don't get bullied by them is wrong. Our toddlers were plowed into many times & unfortunately the teachers & parents tagging along didn't care at all. So much for controlling the class outside of the classroom.

Other than that, Logan was in heaven. He was so excited to see different kinds of bugs, fish & sea life (starfish, snails, etc.), butterflies & turtles. We walked into the butterfly conservatory where there were hundreds of butterflies fluttering all around. They landed on your head, flew by your nose - there was always one if not 20 right in sight. Logan was a little taken aback by so many butterflies, but soon warmed up to the wonder of it all. One landed on my hand & for the rest of the trip he tried so hard to hold out his hand & stay still hoping one would land on him. It was too cute for words.
We spent quite a while there, eating our packed lunches and enjoying some more less-crowed time after the school field trips left. We even went back to the butterfly conservatory one more time for a less chaotic experience. Soon, all of our toddlers were tired & ready to go home. Logan did really well on the trip, only having two minor tantrums - one before lunch & one in the parking lot going home (because he didn't want to hold my hand). It was surprisingly stress free & a really fun experience for the two of us (even with me repeating "don't touch that" a million times in the gift shop).
This is definitely something we'll have to come back & do again sometime soon with Bill. Maybe later this summer when it's too hot to play outside & the zoo is out of the question. And that time I'll make sure to get video of Logan & the butterflies, even though the pictures came out pretty cute (that was a miracle).