Unfortunately, most of our excursion reminded me of the first half of Jurassic Park, where the soon-to-be-screaming/eaten visitors sit idly in their fancy Jeeps wondering where all the extinct dinosaurs are.  I guess it was nap time, because 90% of the animals were passed out after an undoubtedly long Friday night at the trough, or hiding (and probably passed out) which made for a somewhat lackluster zoo experience.  I briefly considered, as an homage to the movie, knocking out a squirrel and dangling it in the tiger habitat in hopes that Tigger might spring to life.  Sadly, the squirrel got away.

There was a few flurries of animal activity however, the first an unexpected treat near the wolf enclosure.  Fortuitously (for us at least), some disaster befell someone nearby and fire trucks were dispatched, sirens blaring, to help.  The wolves mistook this aural explosion as a rival pack howling wolf ethnic epithets (“your mother is a Siberian Husky”) and immediately responded with endless wailing and West Side story-esque prancing and snapping, much to everyone in the vicinity’s delight.  After all, how often do you get to hear wolves howling?  In Syracuse, at least?

The penguins were also reasonably awake, and demonstrating their unique brand of flying-less bird fun.  Justine’s a big fan of them, excitedly tapping on the glass and laughing as they unceremoniously pooped in the water.  And the monkey house was a flurry of activity as well, with the various species of apes happily swinging about, flinging poo, and checking each other for suspicious lumps -the latter prompting a young boy to ask him parents if “that is the doctor monkey” – which the stethoscope around its neck made pretty obvious to me.  Stupid children.

Justine did her best to give the appearance of having fun on our little daddy-daughter excursion, happily pointing at the various animals and muttering random syllables in their general direction. But nowhere was she more excited than outside the lion cage, which in this particular zoo is surrounded by (what i assume is) one-way glass. Her eyes lit up as we arrived, clamored up to the window and of course began to point and pound, too young to realize that waking a sleeping lion is probably not the safest course of action.

But to her, it was just a super-sized version of our house cats.  Although I doubt these cats would tolerate her kind of petting.  Or any kind of petting for that matter.  At least not without a squirrel as a peace offering…

Nap time.

“Daytime night night,” has always been a big part of the day, because in many ways it’s the only uninterrupted time we adults get to actually accomplish anything in the house of consequence, whether it be cleaning the rotting mass of pine needles out of the gutter, painting the 70′s era wood paneling in the basement, or hand-stitching baskets out of thatch we grow in our backyard.  We also occassionally (ok frequently) use this time to relax, watch television shows that include words with more than two syllables and/or do not feature talking animals, or pass out while endlessly repeating the parenting mantra of “nap when they nap.”

When Justine was just a baby (an astounding 6 or 7 months ago), nap time was a twice a day affair,  once shortly after breakfast and the second shortly after the early afternoon re-run of “What Not to Wear.”  Over the past few months, though, it became increasingly harder to get her to fall asleep in the morning, as evidenced by the loud screaming and shattered mirrors caused by angry pacifier tosses.  We finally transitioned to what I refer to as the “epic nap,” where, on a good day, she sleeps for two plus hours, and even occasionally passes out for three.

And I can’t stress enough how important that nap is because it plays a significant role in how shaping our post-nap atmosphere. After many months, my wife and I have devised a simple formula  when it comes to napping – basically the length of a nap is directly proportional to our daughter’s afternoon mood.  Simply put,  the longer the nap, the happier she will be.  The hour nap leads to much consternation, general fussiness and requires a significant “tele-vention” to solve, while the three hour leads to unbridled laughter, dancing, and in some cases full-bore Olympic tumbling run.  And that’s just by us – you should see how Justine acts after one of those babies.

Yes, nap time will probably always be a sacred time for us – at least until the next one comes along and they sleep at separate times.  Then black morass of pine needles will finally and inexorably gain the upper hand…

Ok – it’s not THAT exciting. But still interesting nonetheless.

Way back in the beginning of June, which my sun-addled brain can now hardly recall with any clarity, my wife embarked upon a bi-weekly nap time ritual – mowing the lawn.  Before the traditionalists raise their hackles about her handling this particular chore and not me, I should point out that she ENJOYS it, or at least tolerates it where in fact I despise it.  My fate instead is to scrub the stink out of the bathrooms every now and then – a fair trade if you ask me.  But I digress.

So with my daughter precariously asleep in her crib, my wife outfitted herself with her mowin’ shoes, strapped one of our monitor handsets to her waistband and fired up our trusty mower to halve our blades of grass.  She successfully trimmed our front lawn, which in the summer is generally more dirt and and sticks than grass (thanks to two gargantuan pine trees), and proceeded to the back.  She did a couple of passes on the back, and then stole a quick glance at our trusty light-up monitor to see if Justine was stirring.  The monitor was suspiciously absent.

Not a big deal, she thought, I must’ve dropped it.  She retraced her steps, scanning for the white monitor amidst the freshly hewn grass.  She searched the front yard.  She searched the house.  She tackled the mailman and searched his satchel to no avail.  The monitor had simply vanished.  Thoroughly confused, and perhaps drunk (I’m just guessing), she shrugged and completed the task at hand, in a constant state of cringe at what she assumed was to be an imminent shredded monitor.  It never came.

That afternoon, my wife hosted a gaggle of mothers and their children for a play date.  She delivered her tale of woe to the sympathetic women and their savagely uninterested toddlers, and they all began scouring the yard for the missing monitor.  Despite discovering a number of other missing items – a few ball-pit balls, a wooden puzzle piece and an original draft of the Constitution buried in our side yard, no one turned up the monitor.

I returned home from work, and listened incredulously as she laid out what had happened and everyone’s seeming incompetence at finding a relatively large handset monitor that lit up like a Christmas tree.  With my usual sneer I set about the simple task of turning up the shy electronics.  Much to my amazement, it was nowhere to be found, despite even my own expert searching.

After a heavy rain the next day, we were forced to abandon our search, confident that the monitor had either been rendered inoperable by the water or pilfered by roving bands of unsupervised teens hell-bent on causing minor inconveniences for newly minted parents.  After a brief moment of silence in which we all held hands and remembered “the good times” with the monitor, we turned our attention towards a burgeoning summer of parties, vacations, and many a night of drunken Parcheesi.

And then, just a few weeks ago, months after it had disappeared, we discovered the fate of our little white friend.  As I was unceremoniously uprooting plants trying to wrangle our hose into the yard to fill Justine’s water table, I uncovered our electronic marvel under one of the hostas in our garden.  I picked it up, admiring the relatively good shape it was in, and then scared the bejesus out of our cat as I scampered inside to show my newfound quarry to my shocked wife.

Thus the cycle of loss and recovery was complete – the question that haunted my dreams had finally found an answer, and that small hole missing our lives was once again filled in.  Or something.  But the most amazing part?

IT STILL WORKS.

Nice work, Fisher Price.

- MWF -

Happy Fatherhood Friday to all, and to all a good day!