Quack, Quack, Quack!

We've been trying to teach MayLynn how to say her animal sounds. She's figured out that cats say "meow," dogs "bark," and ducks go "quack," but any other animal goes "roar." But no matter what the animals say, she loves to see any animal that she can.  Because of this, and because Daddy had tech rehearsals all day last Saturday, I decided to take the kids to the zoo.  

We got there just in time to see the handlers feed the sea lions.  It was really fun watching the sea lions practice some of their tricks, and I enjoyed watching my kids too.  Owen wanted to show me his "telescope" (top left picture below) and wanted to make sure that I saw the tricks that the sea lions were doing.  MayLynn was just too interested in watching the animals and wouldn't even look at the camera.

After seeing the sea lions, we went up the hill to see the big cats.  The tiger was taking a bath and the lions were lounging on a warm Saturday afternoon.  MayLynn kept going around growling at the cats - both the real ones and the pictures of them.  The middle-top picture below caught her in the middle of a growl.

After the big cats, we went to the reptile house.  MayLynn's favorite animals there were the turtles (she has a couple of toy turtles and a picture of one on her bedroom wall, so I think that's why she likes them so much). There were a couple that were swimming around that really caught her attention.  Owen was very cooperative and was willing to follow MayLynn around as she looked at the animals that she wanted to.  I even tried to get a picture of the three of us together, but containing wiggles is hard, so the picture in the middle-right below is the best I was able to get.

We also saw a few small monkeys, the peacocks, and the prairie dogs.  As we walked around Owen was a great helper, either holding MayLynn's hand so I could push the stroller, or he pushed the stroller so I could keep track of MayLynn.  It wasn't that long ago that he was in a stroller himself and he's grown so much in the past year.  Finally, we stopped by one of the ponds and let MayLynn see the ducks that she kept asking for.  She sat there for several minutes just quacking at the ducks.

Both of my kiddos were very well behaved and so before leaving the zoo we stopped by the gift shop and they each got to pick out a small toy.  Owen found a small turtle and MayLynn a little rubber ducky. Owen spent the rest of the afternoon tucking the turtle's head and legs into his shell and letting me know that the turtle was now invisible.  MayLynn just kept saying "Quack, quack, quack!" and chewing on her rubber ducky.  By the end of the day, after a trip to the library, the zoo, and Daddy's work, both kids were exhausted. The fell asleep immediately that night.  MayLynn tucked sweetly into her crib and Owen on top of his blankets.