Trip to the Zoo!

We took a trip to the National Zoo on Saturday! We were supposed to meet up with other parents from our church, but it just did not work out right. Luckily our church intern, Erin, rode the metro with us, so we had that connection early on. We had misty rain in the morning, but after lunch the sun broke through and it became a wonderful day.

Abby was excited as soon as we walked in to Amazonia, the zoo's indoor rainforest. When you walk in you are greeted immediately with a pond of rays and other fish. We let her stand and look at them while we waited for others to join us, and she just stared in amazement. Then we moved over to the massive tanks, with all sorts of large fish and turtles. Upstairs you can see into the tanks from a different perspective, which is cool. They also have animals like monkeys and birds that roam free. It was early in the day and we did not see any monkeys and only a few birds.

She was okay with that, since she reall just wanted to see more of the fish. Here she is looking down on the ray-pond:

She fell asleep shortly thereafter. No, seriously. We had a nice time seeing the elephants, hippos, apes, big cats and other various animals. (some pictures of animals are HERE, but I didn't want to overcrowd Abby's site with animal pics) We even had lunch without the gabbing and cuteness of Abby. When she is tired and in her ErgoBaby she can sleep like a champ. I really should post about the greatness that is the ErgoBaby. Soon, my friends.

So, when she finally woke up we were all the way back up to the top of the zoo. If you've never been to the National Zoo you don't know of the slope. It's tedious. We managed, mostly by stopping to stare at animals just a little longer than we probably would have.

She was awake to see the Sloth Bear. She was amazed to see it go back and forth, right in front of her! She was standing, hands and face on the glass, for the longest time. Very cute.

I tried to get her to look at the bear through the blue binoculars (?). She liked playing with them, but did not understand to look through them.

There is a cute bronze statue of a Giant Panda. We sat Abby there for some picture time and she loved it! There's one where it looks like she's trying to escape, and another that looks like she's being tickled. I called this one "One Thinker, One Stinker."

From May 2008

It was a great day, and I wish that I had not messed things up as far as coordination. We'll be going to the Baltimore Zoo sometime, and hopefully back to DC this summer.