A few nights ago Waldo was cleaning Lily up after dinner and he blamed something on her. I said “don’t throw Lily under the bus” and her response was:
I had to have her repeat it once I got my phone off the counter and now she says it all the time.
Tag Archives: Waldo
Another trip to the zoo
Yes we went to the zoo again. In fact it was less than a week after the last time. What can I say, we love the zoo and are trying to get our moneys worth out of the annual membership. This time we took my niece Olivia with us. I was a little worried about having two toddlers at the zoo, but Waldo was there to help and they are both pretty well behaved.
We picked Livi up and headed out.
Lily was a little specious.
She got over it pretty quickly.
Lily showed Livi some of her favorite things.
We bought two little water spraying fans because we knew how hot it was from the last time we were there. The girls spent the first 45 minutes or so watering the zoo.
Looking at the prairie dogs.
He's suspicious.
"What you looking at, foo?"
Livi's watering the camel.
You get the idea. Lots of water being sprayed at the zoo, very little of it being used to cool anyone off.
Livi's trying to get the llama to come to the fence so she could water him.
How fricking sweet is this? They were watching the ant eater, but seriously who cares about the animal, look at those girls.
We tried something we hadn’t done before at the zoo. We went to the bird show. We were sure the girls would have a blast.
They couldn’t have cared less.
Waldo and I thought it was awesome!
This guy wasn't part of the show, but he didn't want to be forgotten. He stood like this for probably 10 minutes. It was really cool.
We walked through the petting zoo, but only Livi was interested. I think Lily was too tired to care. We stopped at the kangaroos right before the petting zoo and Lily laid down on the ground. When I asked her if she was ok, she told me “I’m very tired”. I wish I had gotten a picture of it.
Next we hit up the rainforest hopping to get cooled off a bit. We didn’t.
A porcupine. They are uglier than I expected.
On our way to the tiger Livi sat down to mess with her shoe. Lily thought it was a good idea.
I did not.
We stopped by the elephants on the way out.
We were spent
Livi was asleep before we left the parking lot and Lily was asleep just before we got home. Thankfully they both survived the transfer to the house and stayed asleep for another hour or two.
Then we went swimming at my Aunt’s house.
We had a great day with both girls. They were so cute together and it is one of the biggest reasons that I’m sad that we are moving again (post coming soon). I’m trying to plan another trip to the zoo with Livi and her Mama before we go.
For those of you keeping score, we’ve been to the zoo 7 times this year. I think if we go once more we will have paid for our membership. I’m pretty happy about it.
Statues are for feeding
We went to the zoo again and I swear to you I think Lily’s favorite part is the statues. Sure she loves seeing all the real animals, but she can touch the statues and feed the statues and climb on them and occasionally kiss them.
She's feeding the statue in the Orangutan viewing area.
Hugs
"You are kidding me!"
Lily likes to ride the Komodo Dragon. She's fearless.
Here she is feeding the fierce dragon.
Chillin in the hippo's mouth
Riding a rino
Hugging the elephant baby
She was just about to kiss the elephant. I have to stop her everytime, sometimes I don't stop her in time. Yuck.
We did visit the real animals too.
Trying to pet a stingray
Lily got to feed a real animal too. She actually fed the giraffe for the first time. The two other times she’s tried she made us do it.
There was a lot of saliva involved.
Trying to get giraffe cooties off with A LOT of hand sanitizer.
Lily really wanted to see the Tapir. She talked about it till we found it. She even recognized it on a poster before we got to the viewing area.
Lily and Daddy looking at the zebras
Pretty soon I think I’m going to have to change the name of my blog to Lily’s adventures at the zoo or something. 🙂
Feeding elephants is fun
A few weeks ago our zoo hosted a special member’s only event that I had been looking forward to for a month. Of course I was quite crestfallen when the weather predicted rain all week and Saturday morning dawned gray and drizzly. The weather all afternoon was rainy, but it had lightened up by the early evening so we made the decision to chance a downpour and headed to the zoo.
I’m so glad that we did, we got to see some really cool behind the scenes stuff, had a couple of really neat chats with keepers and almost had the zoo to ourselves. I didn’t get very many pictures because it was getting dark, and really this was our 5th trip to the zoo this year, so there wasn’t much new to take pictures of. Haha, let me just stop here and say that I got over that last part pretty quickly. I mean really, I love to take pictures, especially pictures of Lily.
Lily and Waldo looking at birds
One of the best parts of this special night was getting to go behind the scenes of a few exhibits. One was the elephant house. Unfortunately from the regular viewing area , this is what you saw:
This is the view of the elephants from the viewing area.
We went inside the elephant house and keepers told us what the different rooms were used for. This is the keeper office area and those four paintings were done by our local elephants. I thought that was way cool.
I didn’t get any other pictures of the rooms because it was just too dark. It’s pretty neat though, they have the area where they do medical exams and procedures, and training spaces.
Elephant art
Sorry for the next couple of pictures. They were taken inside the elephant house, which was dark, but I had to share them anyway. After the little talks with the keepers the kids got to feed the elephants. Lily loved this part! She threw little carrots to the elephants over and over again. The elephants loved it too. We found out that our elephants are on a diet, so the carrots were a nice treat for them.
The elephants were happy guys from all the carrot love
"Give me more carrots"
We also got to go inside the animal hospital. Luckily for the animals it was empty tonight except for one lonely ferret, who is now retired from the zoo’s mobile zoo truck.
The healthy but old ferret
We went into the Sting Ray Bay Exhibit for the first time. You can try to pet the stingrays, but Lily was just too short to reach any. She loved trying though.
"come here ray, come here"
Trying to reach a stingray
While we were visiting the Orangutans we got to chat with a keeper who was wearing this really weird, brown, string covered shirt. She told us all about how one of the new Mom Orangutans was 41 years old and this was her 4th baby and the keepers were determined that she would get to raise this baby herself as they know it will be her last. When she had her first baby it was 20 years ago and her milk wouldn’t come in so the baby died, the Keeper made sure to explain that she wasn’t at this zoo till this last baby and zoo’s didn’t know how to help as much back then. For her next two babies, again her milk didn’t come in so keepers raised the babies. When the Orangutan (I didn’t catch her name, I really wish I had) got pregnant again, the keepers at our zoo were going to make sure that she succeeded. For the first two months of the baby’s life the keepers took care of it, but also helped the Mom to stay connected to the baby. The keepers wore that crazy shirt so the baby would get used to hanging on like they do with their real Mom, the keepers wore face masks (think doctor type mask) so the baby wouldn’t imprint on a human, and the keepers slept on a cot two feet from the Mom’s cage so the Mom could reach out and touch the baby at night. The most impressive part (as if that wasn’t impressive enough) was that a keeper pumped the Mom every two hours around the clock to help her milk come in. I know I had a hard time pumping, I can only imagine how hard it must have been to pump a Orangutan. All their hard work paid off because from the time the baby was two months old she has been under her Mom’s constant care and no longer needs the keepers. I was so moved by this story, the keepers hard work and determination to make sure a mother and her baby would have the best chance at life, no matter what species they are, is just amazing. I commented to the keepers as we were moving on that I find it fascinating that breastfeeding can be a challenge to animals just like it can for humans.
The sealions are relaxing
Waldo took this picture because he thought it was very cute that Lily and I both had hoodies wrapped around us.
Not the most flattering picture of me, but that's ok.
This event was one of the reasons I became a zoo member. I loved getting to see behind the scenes.
Random Mobile Shots
There’s a little hill in the front yard and Lily calls it her Mountain. She has to go “see what’s on the other side of the mountain” just about every time we are in the front yard.
