Zoo boomin' fools

First I have to report that we haven't had any more walking attempts since yesterday morning - at least not more than a step or two. Maybe Noah was just being a tease? I guess it'll take awhile for him to realize that walking can be a more effective way of transportation than crawling. He's gonna take some time to get up to snuff. I'll keep you posted - so you won't have sleepless nights wondering if Noah's been walking or not. See - I'm always thinking about YOU.

We primates thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the zoo yesterday. Though it’s impossible to draw an infant’s attention to an animal masquerading as an unmoving distant lump, frolicking animal were mesmerizing to Master Noah. Just like at the aquarium he seemed most intrigued by animals in the water – the turtles and my all-time favorite the otters. I’ve always loved the otters at the zoo because they’re so much fun - all together, cavorting and diving. I’d like to keep a couple of them in my tub just for fun. And of course monkeys and the like are also a highlight – the gibbons, the tamarins, the lemurs all put on a good show. We didn’t hit the fantastic small mammal house until the end by which time Noah had dozed off so he didn’t get to enjoy the meerkats, sloth, marmosets, bats and rats with me but we have a zoo membership now so we’ll have to do that next time. The zoo is about a 20 minute trolley ride from our place so we could go there to kill time on a day when I feel we need to get out of the house for awhile.

In the middle of the day we spent a good hour in the Treehouse – a carpeted child wonderland of giant eggs, bee honeycombs, dinosaurs and caterpillars. It was good for the babies to get down out of our arms and crawl around for a bit – but honestly I think the adults were all a little skeeved out by the germ/odor factor of the place. Everything was sticky and smelled of sweat and urine. I tried to just put the concerns out of my mind and enjoy the scampering boy, but I was still in a mad rush to wipe him down from head to toe as soon as we got out of there.

By the end of our five hour stay at the zoo I was BEAT. I wanted to collapse in a lump on the floor of the gift shop after I picked out a monkey T-shirt for the boy. After the Milliceccobachs left our place we fed our starving infant, had phone conversations with all of the grandparents, ate ground turkey in marinara sauce over whole wheat spaghetti, drank a bottle of red wine, gave Noah a bath before putting him to bed, watched Rome and fell blissfully asleep. I wish I was still sleeping.

I’m sad to say we took very few pictures at the zoo. We were too busy manhandling our own beast I guess. Plus I have a billion subpar animal pictures from my last trip with my sister Jessica. But I’m most ashamed to say we didn’t even get any pictures of the dazzling Ms. Bella in her adorable little safari outfit – so you’ll have to wait for Ms. Patrice to load her photos. Hurry up on that Snapfish downloading, Patrice! I need prints. (Oh and I left the tortoise story for your blog.)