ZOO

Well, we made it to the zoo today and all had a good time. Austin started cutting his right incisor tooth today and had a little temperature, but we went anyway and he acted like he felt fine. He definitely enjoyed seeing all the animals he sees in his books and videos. We went as volunteers to take a group of children from a home for children of incarcerated parents and were paired up with two boys, age 12 and 8. The younger one had never been to the zoo and his favorite animal- no surprise- was the panda. Our older friend likes the tiger best. It's hard to say what Austin liked best, but probably the monkeys ranked near the top. Here are some pictures from the day.

All the boys- posing in front of a big (statue) of a turtle outside the reptile house. The alligator was the favorite of the group from the reptile house.

Austin mesmerized by the monkeys at feeding time.

Elephant!

This jie jie (older sister) took an immediate liking to Austin- and he liked her pretty well too (which he demonstrated by letting her carry him around without protesting).

Our two buddies as we left. We were impressed with how much our older friend took care of the younger one.

Zee-ba! I was not sure that Austin knew what a zebra was, but he sure acted like he did after we told him the name. I did remember he does have a baby animal book that has a zebra, but he doesn't read that one as often as some of this other ones. Nonetheless he liked them.



Monkeys. Unfortunately we didn't quite get to capture Austin's enthusiasm for monkeys on film - he didn't "perform" for the camera, but he really did get excited and kept repeating "monkey, monkey" for quite a long time.