A/N: Sorry to be a little picky for a moment, but I got lots of comments about there not being a zoo in Colorado Springs - how so many people know or care about this detail is a bit of a mystery to me, but since it was more than one person I thought I'd respond. Now, I've never been to Colorado, but my oldest brother has not only been there, he's also taken his children to the dinosaur place in this chapter and to a lovely little place called the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Since our beloved SGC is in Cheyenne Mountain, I'm assuming the two are fairly close to each other.

Ch 21

An hour later they had the stroller, well-stocked diaper bag, and themselves ready to go. Almost. "T, man, aren't you going to get dressed, where's your hat?" Jack asked as Sam sat down on the floor with Danny to help him with his shoes - he could do the Velcro himself, but he hadn't quite figured out which shoe was supposed to go on which foot.

"I was not banned from the base this weekend, O'Neill. I thought I would return to the base and exercise, as I was unable to do so yesterday." Teal'c was giving them the calm, arguing-will-be-pointless look.

"Oh yeah, sure. No problem."

"I will return this evening."

"See you later, Teal'c," Sam called as they headed out the door.

The drive to the Dinosaur Center gave Sam time to recall what had happened the last time she and Jack took Danny somewhere together, alone. Running into Sarah's friend, among other things, had forced them very, very close to that line they tried to avoid. Since then they had spent most of their time with other people. Now though, they were going on another "family outing" type of thing… and she just realized the whole thing had been her idea in the first place.

When they got to the dinosaur place, it took them ten minutes to convince Danny to get in the stroller. He was way too excited about seeing dinosaurs to be strapped down in a little seat and wheeled around, after all. "Please, Danny? It'll be easier for the museum part… but when we get to the kids' section you can get out, okay?" Sam bargained, remembering how Jack had got him in the stroller at the mall.

"Okay."

When they bought their tickets, the girl at the counter smiled at Danny - he had insisted on wearing his cargo shorts, his hat, and one of his dinosaur shirts - he'd chosen the Velociraptor today. "I take it you like dinosaurs," she said to Danny.

"I wuv dem," he said solemnly, nodding.

She smiled and handed them their tickets. "What a cutie-pie. Here's a schedule of children's events for today, a map, and a balloon - all the kids get dinosaur balloons today."

"Thanks," Jack said, passing the papers to Sam, who leafed through it briefly before pocketing it. He handed the yellow helium-filled balloon to Danny, who looked up at it, jerking the string to make it move. It had a T-Rex on the side. Remembering that most small children inevitably gave into the temptation to release a balloon to watch it float away, then regretted the loss when it was out of sight, Jack said, "Let's tie that to the stroller so you don't lose it."

"Kay." Danny passed over the string obediently and watched carefully as Jack secured it to the handle of the stroller.

"There, ready?"

"I am."

"Yup."

"Well then, to Oz."

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

Jack quickly realized that taking two scientists - even if one of them was currently a toddler - to a museum of any sort was… not easy for a man with his attention span for all things geeky. He felt like they were crawling along at a snail's pace. While Sam, of course, hadn't made a career out of anything dinosaur related, he quickly realized that she must have at least gone through a dinosaur phase when she was a kid. Then again, what kid - particularly one with a tendency towards all things scientific, hadn't?

Danny was getting more and more frustrated from his confined seat - it was crowded, and he couldn't see everything through people's legs. Jack finally realized why he was squirming so much and wheeled him over to a bench. "You need a break?" Sam asked, figuring Jack had hit his geek-threshold. She'd been expecting it for a while. "There's a tour about to start, I could take Danny through alone and meet you if you want…"

"Nah, it's not that," he said, unbuckling Danny from the stroller. "He can't see enough."

"How do you…"

"He's Daniel, he can never see enough when it comes to fossils." She smiled. "But in this case… I meant he's getting a great view of knees and legs. Come here, Danny." He lifted him, intending to put him up on his shoulders, then stopped. "Let's get you in a fresh diaper first… who knows how long this tour is."

"I think it's about an hour," Sam said, taking the diaper bag off the stroller. "And I think it's my turn."

Jack looked over to where a bunch of kids and parents - a lot more kids than parents, though, it seemed - were gathering by the entrance to another part of the museum. He set Danny down and said, "You better hurry then."

"Okay, come on, Danny." She took his hand so he could stretch his legs a little after being in the stroller, and hurried him to the restroom.

Jack was eyeing the growing crowd carefully - they'd have to wait half an hour if they missed this group, and he knew they'd both want to wait. Luckily, Sam and Danny came hurrying back over just in time, Danny trotting next to Sam so his little legs could keep up with her.

"That's a lot of people," Sam commented as Jack picked Danny up again and plopped him on his shoulders.

"Yup, and now he's taller than all of them. Come on." She dumped the diaper bag in the seat of the stroller and they barely made it to the group.

Danny was definitely the youngest child in the group that was actually paying attention. There were a few toddlers either fussing in their strollers or trying to sleep, and even one infant in a baby sling, but those were all clearly younger siblings to older dinosaur-nutty kids. The tour guide - a man about twenty or so who was so overly-enthusiastic about everything that Jack had to stifle a groan, was thankfully using a microphone, so Danny could still hear the tour over all the noise. For kids who were obviously so crazy about dinosaurs, some of the kids in the group were making an awful lot of noise. Then, of course, their parents telling them to be quiet was often even more distracting.

Jack, who was holding onto Danny's feet with both hands just in case, zoned in and out on what Tour Guide Ted had to say. He'd pick up on the things that drew oohs and ahhs and wows from the kids, but after "World's largest monasaur!" and "World's only Pachycephalosaurus!" he tended to give the displays a rough once over - they were all right, those dinosaurs. Nothing to go crazy about, in his opinion, but interesting enough to look at. For a while.

Sam kept glancing up at Danny to check on him, surprised at how quiet he was being, and worried that maybe he was bored and not quite old enough for this after all, but each time he was paying attention, and most of the time he was staring at the dinosaur skeletons or models with his mouth open. "That's kind of cool," Jack admitted quietly when they got to "the world's only complete juvenile T-Rex skeleton."

Sam said the same thing when they got to the fossil laboratory, where there were large windows for people to observe scientists working on new things - currently a 25-foot shark found in Kansas.

"Hey, Sam?" Jack whispered. "How did a shark get to Kansas?"

She whispered, "Continental drift, I suppose, and… I can explain it later if you really want to know."

"That's okay. He's not in Kansas anymore, is he?"

"Very funny."

"I thought you'd like that one." He tilted his head up as much as he could as Danny started patting him on the head insistently. "What?"

"Shhh," Danny scolded, putting his finger to his mouth.

"Okay, sorry. Carry on, dino-boy."

The tour ended near the children's section that had all sorts of little hands-on activities. Since most of the tour was children at least five, some as much as ten or eleven, it got crowded and crazy in there, fast. Jack and Sam watched the chaos erupt, watched various parents trying to keep an eye on all their children, and turned to each other.

"Let's come back here later," Sam suggested.

"I was just about to say that," Jack agreed.

They were around a display of herbivores, so Sam found an easy distraction. "Look, Danny, triceratops, like your stuffy."

Since the room was empty now, Jack said, "You ready to get down?"

"Yeah!"

"I'll get him." Sam pulled him off Jack's shoulders and set him down. He immediately ran over to the guard rail of the triceratops display, as close as he was allowed. They were all animatronics, on a timer.

"Hey dey are not moving," Danny said, wrinkling his nose and turning to Sam, who had followed quickly in case he tried to get a little too close.

"Oh, they'll move again in a few seconds, I bet," Sam said. "Look, did you see the nest of eggs over here? Let's count them while we wait for the dinosaurs to move again…"

Jack found a nearby bench where he could still see and hear them both and also see through to the crowded area, and sat down with the stroller. He rolled his neck a bit, feeling it twinge. Maybe he shouldn't have put the kid up there for quite so long.

He watched Sam and Danny watch the dinosaurs - and it was the least boring part of their trip so far. He couldn't help but be amused, still, by the fact that these were his scientists - the two smartest people at the SGC - and he was watching them count fake dinosaur eggs. When the dinosaurs started moving again, Danny jumped, startled, and grabbed Sam's leg. Then, apparently he found being scared funny, because he started giggling.

"I owe you an apology."

Jack turned to the speaker - Tour Guide Ted. "You what?"

"I owe you an apology," he repeated, sitting down at the other end of the bench and nodding towards Danny and Sam. "I predicted he'd be the biggest disrupter of the group."

"Ah."

"I mean, usually if there are babies and toddlers on the tour there's some crying… sometimes they get scared when we get to the ones that move… it causes lots of problems. And your little boy was up so high I spotted him right away and figured he'd be the screamer."

"Well… you caught him on a good day. He was too overwhelmed by all the dinosaurs to make any noise, I think."

"Well, it looks like you've got a future paleontologist there," Ted said. "Especially with that little hat - that's great."

"I don't know, I think he'll be an archaeologist," Jack couldn't resist making the slight distinction.

"Well, I'm off. But I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day. And when he gets a little older, you should check out our Day Camps for kids - they get to dig up their own fossils and put them together and stuff - it's great."

"Uh, yeah, maybe. Thanks Ted." Ted left with a cheerful wave and smile, leaving Jack to privately hope Danny wouldn't be young long enough to grow up enough to go to camp.

Danny came running back over to him, doing the rapid-chattering thing where Jack could only pick up a couple of words here and there. "Um, can you watch him for a minute, I need to find the ladies room," Sam said.

"Sure, it's not as crazy here… Danny, want to go play in the kid area?"

"Yeah!" He let Danny drag him into the children's area and helped him figure out what each little station was for, trying to keep an eye on the stroller.

When Sam came back, she brought the stroller closer, as the area was much less crowded now, although a dozen or so kids were still running from station to station. Danny looked so little compared to the rest of the older kids, both Jack and Sam were worried about losing him in the crowd, but he was happy to stay with them and didn't try to wander. "Much better than what we're used to from him, huh," Jack commented lightly.

"Oh yeah. It's getting pretty late though, he's probably hungry, even though we ate breakfast late."

"Yeah. He had a snack in the car but you're probably right. Danny, you want to go get some lunch?"

"No."

"Aren't you hungry?"

"No."

They looked at each other. "You think he's lying so he can stay with the dinosaurs?"

"I don't think a toddler is really capable of lying… but I think if we put food in front of him he would remember that he's hungry."

"Po-tay-to po-tah-to," Jack shrugged. "We could just eat here if he wants to keep looking around."

"You're not ready to go?"

"He's not," he said simply, shrugging again. "But they probably only have junk food."

"We could just get him a snack," Sam suggested. "Let's go see. Come on, Danny, we're going to go get a snack, then come look at the dinosaurs some more."

The little café next to the gift shop had corn dogs, so Sam grabbed a table in the crowded seating area while Jack waited in line. All the high chairs were being used, so Sam scooted up to the table with Danny in her lap. The woman at the extremely crowded table next to her - two women, three children, and a baby, leaned over to speak to Sam. "Excuse me, could we borrow your salt?"

"Hmm? Oh, sure, take it." She passed her the salt, scanning the kids at the table - they hadn't been the loudest on the tour group, but they'd been in a close second. Half of them weren't even sitting, standing around the table so they could move and swap chips - and fight over the toys that came with the kids' meals.

"Thanks," the woman said as she returned the salt. "I noticed you on the tour," she continued, smiling at Danny. "He was up so high, and with that little hat on he's hard to miss."

"Yeah." Sam was trying to be friendly without being so friendly that she got into a lengthy conversation and either had to outright lie about her relationship to Danny, or use the old 'he's my nephew' excuse.

"He's so well-behaved."

"For the most part," Sam agreed.

"I couldn't believe it - he's so little and he never made a sound. How old is he?"

"Two and a half."

"Wow. He's so quiet."

"Ha!" Jack said as he joined them, carrying two corn dogs and two sodas. While Danny was being pretty quiet at the moment, it wasn't an adjective Jack would generally attribute to the toddler. He set a plate in front of Sam and Danny and sat down across from them with the other one.

"I thought you were going to wait until we left," Sam said, amused, picking up the catsup and mustard and making two little pools on Danny's plate for him to dip.

Jack smiled. "Well, I didn't want to make him eat all alone."

"Ah, wait a second, Danny, let's get your bib," Sam said suddenly as he was about to take a big bite of his corndog.

"I'll get it." While Jack dug around in the diaper bag for the bib, Sam slid the mustard over to Jack. "Well, I found the water." He set the sippy cup on the table and kept digging.

"Huuuuungwy," Danny moaned dramatically, as though he were starving to death.

"Hold your horses little buddy, I'm working on it!"

Sam slid Danny's hat off so that it hung by its strings, just in case. He'd probably figure out a way to get catsup on it otherwise. "Ah ha!" Jack exclaimed triumphantly, producing the bib as though he'd unearthed the Holy Grail.

He passed it to Sam and set about fixing his own corndog to his liking as she snapped the bib around Danny's little neck and slid his plate back within his reach. Jack took a sip of his soda and grimaced. "That one's yours, definitely. And I'm going to get some napkins. The bib needs reinforcements, it's about to come under heavy fire."

She swapped their sodas and tasted the new one - definitely Diet. The women at the next table, who had given the two oldest kids with them permission to go over to the gift shop, which was within sight and had the benefit of significantly reducing the noise level of their table, were laughing quietly. The one who'd spoken to Sam caught her eye again and said, "I'm sorry, but we had a bet about your husband earlier - and my sister thinks she just won. We couldn't help but overhear and she's convinced he's military. I don't know if you know but there's a base near here and…"

"Liz, leave her alone," the other woman scolded, then smiled at Sam. "I'm sorry, feel free to ignore her - if possible. I haven't figured out how in thirty-four years, but…"

Sam laughed, but she was getting uncomfortable. If they'd spotted Jack as military and knew there was a nearby base…

Jack came back with a huge stack of napkins just then, and smiled at everyone, surprised that Sam was still talking to the people at the table next to them. "Hi. Jack O'Neill."

"I'm Karen, this is Elizabeth…" she turned to Sam.

"Oh, sorry. Um, I'm Sam. This is Danny." She had a very bad feeling about the look Elizabeth had on her face.

She saw the light bulb click on just before Elizabeth said, "Wait a minute… Jack O'Neill… you're a Colonel, aren't you? Air Force."

Jack put his defensive face on but his friendly tone didn't really change as he said, "Okay are you psychic or…"

"My husband works with you - or at the same base. Cheyenne Mountain, right?"

"Deep Space Radar Telemetry," Sam, Jack, and Elizabeth said at the same time. Karen just rolled her eyes.

"Who's your husband?" Sam asked, confused.

"He's a Captain. Alan Connors?"

Sam would have spit out her drink if she hadn't been holding Danny on her lap - Captain Connors was on SG-12. As she didn't want to spit diet soda on Danny, she merely swallowed wrong and choked. "You okay?" Jack asked. She nodded and swallowed a few more sips. "We ah… do know him, actually."

"I didn't realize he was married now," Sam said.

"Less than a year," Elizabeth said. "Oh, all of these kids are Karen's."

"I see. Wow. Well…"

"Speaking of the kids, we have to get going. Jeffrey and Alex have swim practice."

"Well, it was nice meeting you," Sam said politely.

"Yeah, you too," Elizabeth said enthusiastically. "I'll be sure to tell Alan I ran into you, Colonel O'Neill."

"Great," Jack said. Sam picked up on the hint of sarcasm but luckily the other two women didn't. It was his most subtle shade.

They waited until the other women had gathered all their children and left before they looked at each other and sighed. "Well… this should up the betting pools considerably," Jack finally said.

Sam shrugged. "Anybody in on base gossip will already know about… Danny."

"Yeah, but come on, it's not like we were ordered to bring him here and…"

Sam just remembered that she hadn't had a chance to correct Elizabeth when she'd assumed Jack was her husband. Granted, that had been before they'd exchanged names, but… "Hey, wait! I never even said my full name or anything. They won't know I work there too."

Jack laughed. "Sam, come on. She's going to tell Connors that she ran into Colonel O'Neill and his family. He's going to ask her what she means, because he knows I'm not married. She'll describe you and Danny, and he'll know exactly who you are."

Sam blushed - Jack luckily didn't know about the 'husband' remark that had slipped by, but it would certainly come up when Elizabeth went home. After a few moments, Jack shrugged. "Oh well. Hammond knows we're watching Danny, and people are going to say whatever they're going to say."

"I guess," Sam said doubtfully.

"Besides," Jack added as he finished his corn dog. "A new rumor like that will deflect from the fact that I was spotted in a geeky place like this in the first place. I have a reputation to protect, you know."

"Oh, please," Sam muttered.

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

After visiting the few rooms that weren't covered in the tour, going back to the children's center again, and visiting the juvenile T-Rex, or as Danny called it, "Baby Wex," once more, Jack and Sam were both ready to go.

Danny, apparently, would have been happy to move in though. He was slowing down, however. He even got back into the stroller after a while, voluntarily. It was way past his usual nap time. "Ready to go, Danny?" Sam asked hopefully.

"No, more dino-saws!"

"We've seen them all though, sweetie."

"We can see dem again dough," he argued.

Jack stopped the stroller and crouched down in front of Danny. "Hey Danny, want to go to the gift shop and get another dinosaur… thing before we leave?"

"Yeah!"

"Bribery, Jack?" Sam asked as Jack gave him a hand out of the stroller.

"Works every time," he said with a shrug. As they headed towards the gift shop - which was enormous, and apparently where all those other children had ended up as well, Jack added, "Like you weren't going to want to take him there anyway."

vvvvvvvvvvvvv

Danny was either stalling or being very picky in the gift shop. He didn't want a different stuffed dino from the one he already had. He didn't like any of the hats with dinosaurs on them as much as the one he was wearing… it went on and on.

Sam found some children's dinosaur books that he didn't have and said, "How about this, Danny?" He sat down and started looking through it immediately, clearly planning on taking his time with the book. Some things just never changed.

Jack groaned. "Come on, buddy, this isn't a library… if you want it you can look at it in the truck."

Sam crouched down next to Danny so there was less chance of him being stepped on, and picked up a dinosaur coloring book and a sticker book. "How about these?" He looked at the covers for a few moments, took them from her, and put them in his lap underneath the book he was still looking at.

Jack just groaned and looked around. "Okay, how about these puzzles too? He doesn't have any puzzles."

"Good idea. Let's check out now, while there's no line."

They hurried up to the register, and it was Tour Guide Ted again. Jack nodded at him. "I thought you were off."

"The woman who usually runs the gift shop had to leave early," he said as he started ringing up the puzzles and the books Danny would let go of.

"Danny, I need that book for a minute," Sam said.

"No. Not done."

"Come on, they have to scan it so we can buy it and you can take it home." He looked genuinely worried that if he handed the book over now, he might never see it again. Sam smiled at him and shook her head slightly - it was very hard to resist those eyes. "Come here, you can hand it to the cashier yourself and watch him scan it, okay?" She picked him up and Danny did reluctantly hand over the book.

"Must be a good one," Ted commented, scanning it quickly and handing it back to Danny. While Jack paid, Sam strapped Danny back into the stroller. "You know all these books and puzzles are for older kids, right?" Ted asked as he slid them into a bag and handed it to Jack.

Not up for another conversation about how brilliant 'their' toddler was, Jack nodded and said, "Yes, but he's an old soul."

vvvvvvvvvvvvv