The Zoo

Good old Hoogle Zoo.

Caleb only worked half the day Monday, so when he got home we took a family trip to the zoo. We have taken Corbin every year since he was born so far and it is fun to see how he grows and develops.

The first year he was about 11 months old and rode around in the stroller with a permagrin on his face, pointing to things like crazy.

The next year he was one and a half and ran around everywhere, totally overwhelmed, trying to take it all in. He would be staring at one animal making that animal's noises and telling me what it was and then mid-thought he would get distracted and run over to the next cage.

This time, at two and a half he was old enough to stand at each exhibit and ask questions about what the animal ate, if it had soft or bumpy skin, if it was a mean or nice animal, etc. And after looking for a couple of minutes he would then say, "okay, lets go to the next animal."

Every time you ask Corbin what his favorite color or animal or food or whatever is, he tells you something different. But I would say he claims giraffes are his favorite animal twice as often as anything else, so we take that to mean they really are his favorite. And he really was excited when he saw them and he wanted to go inside and see them. There was one little one over eating that we took some pictures with to document Makelle's first trip to the zoo.



Then right as we were getting ready to leave the bigger one came inside and walked right up to where everyone was and stuck his nose out to say, "Hello." Corbin thought was pretty neat and keeps talking about how the giraffe was, "poking his head under the fence, that's so silly!"



Those are such large, impressive animals. It really was cool to be right there with it.

Corbin got really excited when he saw this elephant statue. There were a couple of kids playing on it, and he ran over there to join them and right when he arrived it screeched and blasted a puff of air into his face, which totally freaked him out. It was pretty funny to see our brave little fearless child so scared of some air. He must have thought it was a real elephant for a second there or something.


We also saw the monkeys. For some reason there seems to be a disproportionately large amount of primates at the Hoogle Zoo, but that's okay because they are one of my favorites. While watching them run around and eat their food and climb and swing Corbin was standing next to a little girl that looked to be about his age. They immediately started talking to each other, sharing their vast knowledge about monkey's lives and enlightening one another. Then Corbin looks up at me and says, "she's just my little friend. That girl is my friend." I love how little kids can instantly be friends. Why does our society teach us to suppress that outgoing, friendly attitude as we grow up and start worrying so much about impressions?

Any who... we all had fun together. Makelle was a little doll--just her cheerful, happy little self the whole time. And Corbin was awesome, but he is definitely his father's son. He spent no more than a couple of minutes at each area, moving swiftly and purposefully through each exhibit. And at one point, he told me he didn't want to take anymore pictures. Boo boys.



I don't know why those boys don't like it when I try and pose the family for pictures all the time :) It works out so great!