We made the long trek to the big zoo today. He woke up at 6:40, just before Carly was going to leave for work. Delayed her a bit, but he was nice and happy when she left. We had oatmeal and strawberries for breakfast, and then got ready to leave earlier than usual. We were ready about 8:30, but he was really into reading and kept wanting to read the Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus book, which he finds hilarious. So we kept reading, and ended up leaving right at 9.
Subway rides were pretty uneventful both ways. Headed down, we read books half the way, then traced letters on the iPad. Once off the subway we put him in the backpack and made the long walk to the children’s zoo. We would stay there for about an hour and a half – about 11:00 to 12:30 – and didn’t see a single other visitor until we were leaving and a group walked in the gate. He was looking tired early on, and was quiet the whole time, but had fun feeding the sheep, and then we got to go to the half of the children’s zoo that was closed last time. Had fun seeing all the marmosets and birds, and saw two animals for the first time: tamarins and mongoose. Also found that they had a very awful looking and very smelly dog area. Looked like a dog pound, not something for a zoo, particularly as all the dogs just bark at you. Yuck.
From the children’s zoo we walked across to the main zoo and walked for a few minutes until he fell asleep. The zoo was pretty much deserted. Didn’t see a single school group, although we saw a few groups going to the ‘Giraffe World’ play/learning center on our walk to the zoo – basically, I think all vaguely outdoor field trips are cancelled if there is the possibility of rain. Went to the food court area by the dolphin show and he slept there from 12:31 to 1:56.
When he woke up it was now raining pretty hard. So we got equipped in all our rain gear and went out to explore the zoo for an hour before the dolphin show at 3. Saw the ibex for the first time, then found the Asian Jungle building so we could get out of the rain. There, we saw all sorts of macaques, then a bunch of snakes. Still had some time before the dolphin show when we got back, so we sat at a covered picnic table and August finished off his leftover ravioli as a snack. He was still in the backpack, on the bench, as he didn’t want to get out.
At 3 we walked over to the dolphin show. Turned out we were the only ones there. Literally. Just the two of us in the audience. So we stood right up front, just a few feet from the guy running it and the seals. I held August. He was still a little weirded out by it, but didn’t cry. Will be interesting to take him back sometime in the spring and see how his reaction changes.
The show only lasts 10 minutes, then we went out and put him back in the backpack and headed out. On our way out, we went into the building where you can see the water buffalo, elephants, and rhinos in their very depressing cages. On our walk back he was really singing the alphabet in both English and Spanish. A few minutes before the end he started to say ‘cold’, I think because his hands were really cold. Got back to the subway, and got one seat to start with on the way back. Which was fine, as August lay sideways in my lap for several minutes, finishing his sandwich (we had lunched across from the sheep earlier). When a seat opened up, I sat him next to me. He spent much of the rest of the trip tracing letters – he is definitely making progress in trying to draw the letters. The last several stops, we read Dr. Seuss stories.
Got home just a couple minutes before 5:30. He ate more pasta for dinner, and did art and reading with Carly. More pigeon boo, in particular, with both me and her. When I said it was time for a bath, he took Smokey (he had also been playing on the couch, wanting to climb on the back) to the front door and was trying to open the front door, as if to escape. Carly got him in to the bath though, and he didn’t complain. Pretty quiet after that, and he fell asleep a little before 8:30…or so I thought. They were very quiet in there, but around 8:45 the door opened and August walked out. We cuddled together and read books while Carly took a shower. Read Where the Wild Things Are three times and several other books. He then got up and was playing with his magnets on the door for several minutes. Then, at 9:18, he suddenly was done and ready to go back to the bedroom. As he went in he said “night night” to me.
He was really into backwards/upside down letters today – there was a ‘6’ on the ground when we were waiting for a train, and he kept walking around it, saying ‘9’, then ‘6’. He then was looking at our drawing pages upside down at home and saying “backwards”, and doing the same with Where the Wild Things Are.
The most recent growing up sign is that August has stopped nursing in his sleep in the morning.
New words/phrases: dada’s email (he has used the phrase ‘mama’s email before’, but I don’t think I’ve made note of it. Today he managed to open my email on the iPad and recognized it as email, even though he had never seen it before), straight line down (tracing letters on iPad), camel as pillow, (talking about how he uses his ‘camel’ as a pillow when napping in the backpack), more Guinea pigs (spotting more of them), counting by twos (he was saying ’12, 14, 16, 18’ and saying ‘counting by two’ – got this from Endless Numbers), no sound ng (he was saying this to himself as we walked home – it refers to when we were at the subway station and I taught him that the ‘o’ in Korean makes the ‘ng’ sound when it is at the bottom – to this point he has just called it ‘no sound’), ibex (animal we saw at the zoo)
Children’s zoo:
Rabbits:
Big zoo:
The white handed gibbons were interested in us
Our private show:
Spanish on the way home:
Looking at letters sideways, upside down, and backwards:
