In my life...

"There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed..." (John Lennon)

As a child I sometimes visited Chester Zoo. Today Hayley and I brought our own children to the very same zoo.

It was a wonderful day. It was summed up for me by a couple of moments. One was when Hayley turned to me smiling as she pushed Lucy in her pushchair (and I pushed Oliver on his trike) and said "we're at the zoo with our two kids". We truly do still have those "pinching ourselves" moments. Maybe it's down to having kids later. I'm not sure. The second moment was when I lifted up Oliver for him to see an elephant repeatedly showering himself with mud which he sucked up with his trunk. Oliver laughed out loud with a screech of delight and cried "again!". The elephant duly obliged.



There were other memorable moments with Oliver: watching the "swinging monkeys!"; coming into the bat enclosure with me; riding on the monorail overhead train (which probably impressed him more than any animal); taking a boat ride past the giraffes; watching the sleeping lions ("can we have a ride on them?"). They were all special.



And then there was Lucy. She has been under the weather for the last couple of days with rather unpleasant nappies which seem to leak at every opportunity, but she never complains. Today she was adorable, alternately napping in her pushcahir or just watching the goings-on around her. She had another horrendous leaking nappy incident at the restaurant at lunchtime that even resulted in Hayley having to remove her own shirt and spend the rest of the afternoon with just her fleece under her coat. And we'd forgotten Lucy's change of clothes, so Lucy spent the rest of the afternoon well-wrapped up in her cosy-toe, blanket, coat and hat, but with no trousers on. Bless her.

But none of this could detract from a beautiful day. The sort of day you dream of spending as a family.

And there were no tantrums from Oliver. Better than that, he had a couple of moments where he teetered on the edge of a tantrum and then, with the aid of just a gentle word or two, he decided to do otherwise. (I think it also helped that he napped on the way there in the morning too, so he never got overtired.) He really was a brilliant little boy all day.

We saw a lot, but there was a lot more we didn't get round to seeing. So we're already looking forward to our next visit.