Animal Anxieties

Noah loves animals ... in books.  Now cats and dogs are no problem for Noah, but anything else causes some anxiety.  We read about animals all.the.time!  The first animal sound Noah made was "Moo" at my cousin's house right after his first birthday while reading our favorite, Is Your Mama a Llama?   We visited Max at the Museum of Life and Science a few months earlier that summer and Noah was okay with him until he started actually mooing.  Poor Max; Noah has never been a fan.

Max

In March, Noah and I visited the NC Zoo.  This was our second visit; the first visit he was all about the chimps.  He looked at them forever.  This visit- nope.  He was not having it.  He was seriously scared and wanted to stay as far away as possible.  I'm pretty sure he didn't think there was glass between us.  He eventually warmed up to the elephant, but initially he ran away.

Even though I know he's still wary of Max at Life and Science along with the donkey, goats, and sheep he warmed up to the bunnies and pigs on our last visit.  The next day we were going to Farm Animal Days.  If you are a mom in our area you've heard about this.  Three days a year, for a few hours each day, the NCSU College of Agriculture lets you come on their farm to touch the baby animals and eat ice cream for free.  How could you not want to go?  So their website says that 9am is one of their not busy times.  We headed over to get there at 9 and were slammed with a minivan SUV traffic jam before we even hit the driveway.  Almost 15 minutes later we were parking in a field surrounded by what someone Tweeted as Woodstock for Honda Odyssey's.  It was SO crowded.  Noah has never been anywhere so crowded besides the fair and he was in the stroller then.

We started with baby bunnies.  Nope, Noah would not touch a bunny let alone let go of my shirt and hair to get close to one.  I should have brought the Ergo.  Next baby chicks.  So cute but no dice.

The signs all over the chick area said to wash your hand immediately after touching these little cuties.  Well of course, I couldn't find the hand washing station immediately.  All the while Noah practiced his gentle touches all over my face.  Good thing he didn't touch the chick all that much.  Once we found that hand washing station I could barely pump the water out anyways.  Good thing for wipes!

He did touch a baby goat; is that a kid?  He's into goats right now. I think he thinks it's fun to say.  No lamb though; it was so soft.  He has no idea what he's missing.  We tried to take a picture with the lamb.

From the goats and sheep we could see the tractors.  There were maybe 5 of them.  Noah really wanted to get on a tractor.  He just kept saying it over and over again.  Unfortunately the lines were too long for us to wait.  Poor kid, this was the only thing he wanted to do.  Maybe next year.  Instead I drug him over to the cows for a bit more torture. 

 Yes, those are baby tears because we are too close to the mom and baby cow in the pen behind us.

But he dried his tears and actually started talking about the cows.

Because he found some about 200 yards away with a body of water between them and him.  Can you just barely see the black dots in this photo? Those are the cows he started yabbering about.

And then the moment I was most looking forward to.

A little open space to sit in the sun with some strawberry ice cream.  And though exhausted, Noah did not nap after our farm adventure (we are on an every other day schedule this was an off day). But we still had a great day and I'll be looking forward to another Farm Animal Day next year with a little less anxiety.