At the Zoo

(I just realized that I forgot to blog about our trip to the zoo on Thursday. Whoops!)

Thursday is my day at home with Relia. I think it would be fair to say that the FP Gal being home this summer spoiled me a bit. We're still working on a rhythm. This week featured a string of time-outs and several clean ups on my part. Not so fun.
In the back of my head was the idea to go to Como Zoo. They open at 10a and I wanted to time it close to opening time both for parking and crowd reasons. We were in the car roughly on schedule for that and I made my way to 35W without event. Then I looked in the mirror and realized that she had fallen asleep on me. Made my way back home and started to get her out of the car so she could nap in her own bed. No luck. She woke and demanded we see the animals. After a short discussion, it seemed like she was awake enough so back on the road we went.
Got to the zoo about 1030a which was early enough. Breezed into the place and the first thing we saw was flamingos. I don't remember working on flamingos with her in any books. But she accepted the name and their defining feature (pinkness) without any problem. In with them were ducks which made both of us happy.
Next was the primate house. She rushed from section to section finding the monkeys and then moving on. At the end is the gorillas. They were outside. I told her that they weren't monkeys but 'gorillas'. She accepted this.
Then it was the hoofed African mammals. She knows zebras but not antelopes. She took my word on the ostriches. Giraffes she knows. We agreed that they're tall.
The big cats come up next and they're my favorite. The mountain lion was out pacing and we got to watch him moving. I love the similarities between them and the kitties in our house. It's like they were blown up by some awesome Xerox or something. The tiger (my very favoritest) was obviously tired. The lion was asleep in her food.
Over to the aquatics. The penguins looked happy, the polar bears are under construction. The big hit was the seals. Or possibly the sea lions. I don't really understand the difference. (The FP Gal does and has tried to explain it to me many times. Obviously it hasn't taken.) So they were all seals. She liked them.
We saw the tortoises sunning themselves. One of the zoo workers had a skink on display. (Of interest to me, blogger doesn't believe that 'skink' is an actual word.) Then a quick sit on the tortoise statue, a spin through the tropical section and we were done.
Back home for lunch and naps all around. It turned out to be a pretty good day.