Petting Zoo Season

Once upon a time, I took Mary to a petting zoo. She thought the animals were pretty cool . . . from far away. The little goat by the fence was much too scary to touch, so we kept our distance and never even went into the petting area. 

A week later, we took a family outing to pick strawberry's and Paul took Mary over to see the animals. Mary was extra curious about the animals, but convinced Paul to do all the petting. If a sheep came too close to the fence, Mary was gone. 

Somehow or another, Paul came mighty close to kissing a lovely lady sheep all in attempts to show Mary that sheep are super nice.  

The next week, we ventured to the Atlanta zoo and once again found ourselves a happy little petting zoo. This time, we actually went IN the fence to see the animals. Mary decided she would be safe hiding behind Thatcher, even though he is half her size, he made a nice little barrier between the girl and the sheep.  

At least, until the sheep moved and Mary cried and wanted me to hold her until we got out of the horrifying petting zoo. 

THEN, being the good Mom that I am, we somehow found ourselves at the petting zoo at Stone Mountain. Not sure why I even made the effort to walk the paces to the petting zoo, but somewhere in my mind I was sure Mary would love the animals this time around. 

Not happenin. She started saying "no, no, no" as soon as we got there and, like all of us, found this goat in the baby pool to be completely sketchy. 

I think it's easy to say that we've had a little petting zoo overload this month. I don't know why we've tried this many times to get our daughter to put her hands all over some mangy animals, but it's supposed to be fun, right? Maybe someday she'll be begging us to let her pet a goat, but for now Mary likes her animals best if they cannot move, breathe, or look at her.