I Am Obviously All About the Promptness

You don't come here for up-to-the-minute, in-depth reporting, do you?  I hope not, because I'm sure you're sadly disappointed if that is the case.

Case in point:  Hey, let's talk about that trip I returned from a week ago!  Because I know you were DYING to hear about it and see the pictures.

Maybe not, but onward nonetheless.

Christmas Eve in the morning at my sister's we did our present opening and such, because N.N. was leaving that afternoon to spend Christmas with her mom.  After she and her father left for the airport, A., my sister, and I took Cubby to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.  We figured Cubby would go crazy about all the stuffed animals (taxidermy stuffed, not teddy-bear stuffed).

He did.  Go crazy, that is.  That child literally went INSANE for the first half an hour or so we were there.  He was just running at full speed through enormous crowds of people, and then periodically falling to his stomach in the middle of the floor, as if he just couldn't take the excitement and needed a break on his face for awhile.  In the middle of the heaviest foot traffic he's ever encountered in his young life.

This is why there are no photos of him at the museum.  He was moving too fast to be captured on camera, and I was too busy trying to keep him out of the way of the holiday crowds.

He got a little hysterical, if I'm to be truthful.  Eventually we found a relatively quiet room with some seats, in which we sat while he ate some almonds and cruised around looking at the skeletons of various birds and things.  After that, he was calmer and a little more able to take things in.  Though he hit the wall about two hours in and was practically catatonic by the time we left half an hour after that.

He enjoyed it, though, and made his father very proud by identifying a lemur.  Clearly a prodigy.

Christmas Day, after church and a very large meal, we spent a lot of time sitting in my future brother-in-law's vintage (is that the right word for a 70's-era vehicle?) Jeep Scrambler.

Do not even attempt to remove this child from the driver's seat.  He will be ENRAGED.  Trust me.  I speak from experience.

And we went to a marina on the Potomac River to hang out on the grass and eat some apples.

Because why not? 

He also enjoyed the National Zoo--also a part of the Smithsonian Institution--that we went to the day after Christmas.  He was significantly less hysterical at the zoo, and so I do have some photos of that.

Holding hands with a panda . . . 

Riding on his soon-to-be uncle's extremely high and broad shoulders . . . 

And, of course, rolling around on the ground.  Are you sensing a theme here?

Incidentally, that last picture was right outside the bobcat enclosure.  This was pretty much the highlight of Cubby's zoo experience, because the bobcats were enjoying a rabbit snack when we got there.  We stood there for several minutes watching them gnaw on the bunnies while Cubby helpfully narrated the action, "Cat?  Eat?  Meat?  Rabbit?"

I think that's enough for now.  Tune in tomorrow for more pictures and the story of our visit to Longwood Gardens, which ranks right up there as one of the most fantastic places I've ever visited.