What noise does a lion make?

Roar! Jeff and I both took a day off work and decided to take Waddy to the zoo. We went to the zoo once last year with her - it was the hottest day of the summer and I don't think she even noticed any of the animals. It was certainly different this year! She loved the penguins - and after twenty minutes of staring at them swimming in the water and watching them intently when we decided it was time to move onto the next exhibit she was a little frustrated with us - however, the next exhibit was the petting zoo. She was in heaven. She just ran around and watched all the animals and even was brave enough to touch some of them! Moving on from here was a little bit easier - since right at the end of the petting zoo is hand sanitizer - yes, my child has a fascination with hand sanitizer. Whenever she sees it in a public place; a play area, the bottle return at Meijers, or in my purse she gets excited and puts her hands out - if you put a little bit on her hands she'll rub them together rather ferociously.

Next was the tigers, one of the tigers was being very active and pacing back and forth between the windows and rubbing his head on the window. Addison thought that was really neat and it was so awesome to see her put the connection together and let us know that she knew that a tiger "roared." The whole time we were standing there she would "roar" at the tiger. It was great. We had the opportunity to teach Addy the noises that other animals make too - in the reptile house she learned that snakes say "hissssss," but when we got to the turtles (SIDEBAR: (tur-tle) is one of Addison's favorite words already. She has a couple of turtle bath toys that she always tries to make all over the house toys....) she looked at us and said "tur-tle?" and wanted to know what noise a turtle makes. Jeff and I looked at each other - with that "ohcrap, what noise does a turtle make?" look. I finally just looked at her and confirmed, "Turtle!" She was content with that...for now.
She also saw the bears. Addison has a couple of books by Dharma Wilson, the first of these is THE BEAR SNORES ON which we got for her at Christmas. This book is all about how a bear hibernates and all of these other critters come into his lair to have a midwinter party AND THE BEAR SNORES ON....until he wakes up....Very cute book. Then this spring we found another one about how the BEAR WANTS MORE. This book is about how when the bear wakes up from hibernation and is skinny and hungry and he and his critter friends scavenge the woods until he is so stuffed that he can not fit back into his lair. These are definitely Eklove Family Favorites. Well, it must have been close to feeding time for the bears since the grizzly bear kept going back to the metal door in his exhibit and poudning on - "gimme my food!" And for anyone out there who has a baby or toddler these books are GREAT - heck, they are great even if you don't have kids!

Addison certainly wore herself out running around and checking everything out. We have also entered the very independent stage - please take me out of my stroller and please do not try to hold my hand....just let me run! As long as you can keep up with her this works very well - she wore herself out!



Whew - what a day!