ZOO!

Today we all woke up from a nap at lunchtime and were watching Animal Planet. Hailey started going nuts and stomping her feet and running around and growling and tweeting and meowing watching all the animals. D says "Hey let's go to the zoo"...so he checked the weather for good ol' St. Louie on the internet and we loaded up the cat and headed out, just like that. We got there mid-afternoon and it couldn't have been a more perfect day to go. Not very hot, overcast, perfect weather for the zoo! Hailey had a BLAST. This was her longest car ride so far, and she did wonderfully. Sleeping a little, talking to us, reading some books. And she LOVED the zoo. She loves animals! In the primate house she ran around "hi monkeys! hi monkeys!" and since it was about 6:00 by the time we got to that part, some of the monkeys were pretty tired and laying down, so she said "night night monkeys!" Every time we'd leave an animal cage she would say "bye!" We saw elephants nuzzling each other and she said "awwww"...she was just too cute all day. We went in the penguin house, which is kept at a very low temp for the birds and she said "cold!" the whole time we were in there. When we were looking at all the bears we came upon a pen with a little furry bear high up on the cliff...I told D not to bother stopping because she wouldn't notice it anyway, but boy was I wrong. She saw it right away, and pointed and exclaimed "monkey!" In her defense, it did look a bit like a monkey up there. She saw the huge tortoises and said "rock"...there was no convincing her, seeing as how they weren't moving. I think the place she loved the most was the reptile house. She got to see snakes for the first time, and she LOVED them! One was slithering all along the glass like it was trying to get out and she loved putting her hand right up next to it...she'd say "snake!" She got so excited at seeing one little snake that she started stomping and stomping like crazy, which is what she does when she steps on bugs. When she saw the anaconda she pointed at his head and said "eyes"...she's such an observant little girl! Hailey had a great first trip to the zoo.

After the zoo we stopped by D's grandparents' house since they live about 15 minutes away from the zoo. Hailey warmed up to their house very quickly and loved their huge front window that is low enough to the ground for her to walk up to and look out. She kept going over and putting her hands on the windowsil and saying "Outside! Cars outside!" And then she started asking for Cheerios because it was about dinner time, so she started carrying those back and forth to the windowsil while exclaiming "Cheeos!" His grandparents got such a kick out of her. She ate half their container of blueberries, which they thought was so neat. She would push her empty bowl across the table to his grandma and ask "more?" and she'd fill it back up and Hailey would said "Thank you!" Finally we had to cut her off, I think she would have eaten the whole container!

It's after midnight, we didn't get home til about 11:15 or so. Hailey went to sleep right away, she was so happy to see her crib. She was uncomfortable in her seat on the way home and woke up quite a few times crying. She's majorly teething right now running a temp. about 99.6 and drooling like crazy, but we figured the outing today would be a great distraction for her and boy were we right. Hopefully she'll sleep in tomorrow and get a good nights sleep. I can't wait to get the pictures from today developed!! Tomorrow I'll post some pics...