In theory, I should be reading through the pile of books I have, but I'm taking a small break. Don't you feel special? :)

Overall, things are going pretty well here. The weather has been somewhat crazy: we'll have a couple of days with highs in the 80s, then we drop down to the 40s-50s (yesterday was an 80 day; as I write this at 11 a.m., it's 39). I realize that April is usually all over the map, but it sure wrecks havoc with me. I got used to the nice weather very quickly!

On one of the nice days this week, I took Ronan to the Akron Zoo. It's kind of like the Como Zoo (for my MN readers), though not quite as big or with as many animals. Also, since it's still early, some of the exhibits were closed. We still had a lot of fun though. I was a little nervous because I decided not to bring our stroller, but Ronan had a lot of fun walking on his own. I only had to carry him at the end or just from one exhibit to the next. He enjoyed looking at the lemurs, the jaguar cubs (who were chasing each other and wrestling like the dogs - Ronan kept pointing and yelling "da! da! which is his word for "dog"), the lion, and the little monkeys we saw. But by far the biggest thrill for him was hanging on to the fence and watching the construction workers and their machines digging a new plaza type area. We stood and watched them for a long time. At one point, one of the workers came over and told us we could feed the workers if we had beer and peanuts. We did finally move on, but we had to go back by it on our way out, so we stopped and watched for awhile again. I know the prevailing evidence at this point is that gender is a social construct, but this does make me wonder if there isn't some ingrained love of trucks in boys. Ronan certainly wasn't the only little boy fascinated by the site (although I was apparently the only mother who wasn't on some sort of strict itinerary that prohibited stopping).

I also finally met one of our neighbors the other day. I've been embarrassed because we've been living here for five years and I still hadn't introduced myself, but last week I saw them outside with their little girl, so I brought Ronan over. They're very nice and their daughter is only a month older than Ronan. We've played together a few times now and it's been great getting to know them. The kids are more likely to just play near each other, given their age, but Ronan really seems to like them (and the big ball they have) - when we're outside now, he'll start heading over to their yard, even if they aren't there.

Well, I think break time is officially over. Time to get back to work!