Playing with nana... and other animals

This blog is supposed to be about Jack. What's with all these mommy ramblings about the meaning of mommyhood and identities apart from being a mommy? (Really, I appreciated the conversation that came out of that last post, thank you for your insight and support. But now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming about JACK!)

Just to show you that our priorities are back on track: it was our anniversary yesterday and we took not a single photo, but we did take a bunch of photos of Jack and his nana. She had kindly offered to babysit while we went and had our second annual hot-tubbing anniversary retreat last weekend. So this will be how we remember spending our fourth anniversary:

Jack loves his nana dearly. She is the only other person besides mama and dada that gets called by name. I have been way overdue in getting some photos of Jack spending time with her, because he has spent so much time with her the spring while mommy was upstairs getting work done, and not taking photos of all the fun things that were going on downstairs. Reading books, playing with toys, playing outside, exploring the garden... it was screaming out for a photo montage, so I'm glad we finally recorded it.

Meanwhile, mommy has finally gotten her act together and remembered that it is fun to stop worrying about when the work is going to get done and use breaks between babysitters as an opportunity to go exploring. This week we went to the zoo, and discovered a huge area that we didn't even know was there the last time we went, which is home to some pretty huge animals.

Who knew there were giraffes in Oakland? Jack was enraptured. I could not pull him away from this guy:

I don't know where Jack learned to make elephant noises, but he totally does it, and pretty well, too. He kept trumpeting at this guy, and though he never got a response, he didn't stop trying. He is the perfect age for the zoo right now. We're going to have to make a lot of trips this summer.