More Zoo

This weekend, I took Sasha to the zoo....twice!
I took her on Sunday, but it was so crowded and hot. We only stayed about 2 hours. It was still great fun though. First I took her to the children's zoo. I let her run around and look at all the animals in the children's zoo section (farm animals). We spent most of our first zoo visit in the children's zoo only. Afterwards, we went on the carousel. Watching her enjoy her carousel ride was very heart warming to me. I want to always remember the expression on her face. It wasn't a smile. She was just soaking it all in and very thoughtful.

Because it was so crowded on Sunday, I figured I'd have to come back to do some of the other stuff that I wanted to do but skipped due to the long lines.
On Monday, we saw the butterfly exhibit. Sasha was mostly disinterested in the butterflies and flowers, and found the sewer grates, rocks, and water hoses more fascinating.
The exhibit was very beautiful. Sasha did wave hello to some of the butterflies, and tried to swat at one. A butterfly landed right on her head but she didn't notice, as you can see on the pic to the left. (butterfly on her head)

Next was the elephants. At the elephant exhibit, there was an elephant shaped water sprinkler that children could turn on and run through the water. Sasha had a BLAST with that. Every time we passed by the elephants, she would start chanting "lalalalalala" (lala means water in Sasha language). She liked to run through the water and watch the other children as they ran through the water. She loved pressing the on button, although her little hands weren't strong enough to push it successfully.


Playing with the sprinklers
We went to the monkey exhibit, the children's zoo again, then we watched the polar bears for a good 20 minutes. Sasha LOVED the polar bear. We caught it in a playful mood, so it was very entertaining. The polar bear was leaping into his pool of water, swimming around, playing with his toys. Sasha was highly amused and wanted to climb over the fence to play with the bear (yikes!)
After some more playing in the water sprinkler, we hit the carousel. Sasha spent a good part of the carousel inspecting the gears above her, trying to figure out how the thing worked.

Sasha napped well afterwards on both days. I really enjoyed spending that time with her. I know she probably won't remember the trip, but I think she actually learned a lot. She learned the names of a bunch of different animals at least.