A Day at the Zoo

Last Wednesday we went to the San Francisco Zoo. We started out in the African Safari area, of course, because we could see the giraffes from the entrance, and if you've known Sweet Pea for a while, you might remember that her first VERY favorite animal was the giraffe. She still has a soft spot for them - especially when they're real! We bought a family pass since we had so much fun, and even though we've been twice in the past couple years, we've never managed to see the whole thing.

You might say, "But Violet, it's June. Why are you wearing sweatshirts?" Well, have you ever heard that perfect explanation of SF Bay Area weather by Mark Twain? It's so fitting. It goes something like this: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." There. Now you know.

See, the SF zoo is right across the street from the ocean, so the weather there is ever-changing. The night before we went I looked up the forecast for the next day. What I read was, "clear and high of 76." But what we got was complete fog cover all day, and temperatures of 57 and plummeting. Good thing we knew what to expect. We took long pants and sweatshirts/sweaters for all of us. We could have brought even warmer clothes, though; The Bug got too cold by the end of the day, even though she was snugged up to either me or Slipshod nearly all day in the Baby Bjorn. Slipshod had to tuck her inside his fleece jacket to get her warm enough. I kept her sun hat on her most of the day just to keep her head warm, but a fleece baby hat would have been even better.

We stopped on the far side of the African Safari area to nurse The Bug and let her stretch her legs for a bit. Before we moved on, a giraffe came right up to the railing you see behind us and ate some leaves on a branch that was hanging on rope on a pulley right in front of the little "house" area. (You've got to click on the picture above to see it bigger so you can see the cute expressions on the girls' faces.)

We do this a lot. So why am I not fit and trim? Shouldn't this sort of exercise count for something? Note how The Bug is helping me push the stroller. ha ha!

Posing with the parrots outside the Brazilian Rainforest building, where they had a really really scary-huge Green Anaconda. It eats ROUS's - seriously! Things like Tapir and Capybara. Even Caiman. Scary snake. Sweet Pea thought it was great, though. After visiting the giraffes she wanted to see "snakes! Snakes! Snakes!"

In more recent news: The Bug is walking. Yep. Starting about a week and a half ago she started taking one step at a time. Last Thursday while I was away from home (BY MYSELF! GASP!!!) Slipshod called to tell me that she had stood up in the hallway, taken four steps, sat down, and then stood up and did it again. The next day, it was 10 steps at a time. She is still doing a mix of crawling and walking, but clearly enjoys walking and gets very happy when she takes a bunch of successful steps in a row. We have counted up to 20 at once, and sometimes we've lost count. She's definitely walking!

You can thank Christina for me finally posting again. She asked a while back to see a front view of my new haircut, and we didn't have any good pictures of my face until the zoo trip. ha ha!