Waxing and Waning in Suburbia: Going to the Zoo, zoo, ZOO!

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Saturday we took Morgan and Lily to Woodland Park Zoo for their first time. What a craZy experience it is with kids. Not like how I remember it being. We could only see a few exhibits and play in the Zoomazium toddler area before Morgan was done and exhausted. Steve and I will not be doing the Zoo again unless we have help. We each had a baby to take care of so I was unable to take hardly any pictures and missed Morgan seeing a lot of the animals because I had to stay with Lily. The Zoo was packed which didn't help things either. The worse part of the Zoo were all the crappy parents that infiltrated the place. It's sort of scary to see what people are doing to the next generation emotionally. I am probably somewhat of an extremist when it comes to gentle/positive parenting, but seriously yelling at a tiny toddler that is already hysterically crying isn't going to help the situation, just an FYI. Ugh. I saw three kinds of parenting while at the Zoo. There was the overwhelmed and angry parent, the parent that didn't parent, and then the involved loving parent. The third was sadly few and far between. I guess I should just try and block all the people out and enjoy our visit, but it's hard. I am still trying to figure out how to handle things and be a good parent myself so it's interesting to see other parents in action (or not). I like to see what works and what doesn't. Next time we go to the Zoo I would like to go during the week to avoid the crowds and bring both Grandmas.

On the positive side of things Morgan had a great time! He really wanted to just run around and do his own thing. He is so independent. He loved the play parts of the Zoo the best. There was this kid sized cave he ran around in and he was yelling and chattering so loud it was echoing out and it was hilarious. Many people found this amusing. We have some of it on video we will post later. Their is also a toddler play place called the Zoomazium. He wasn't too impressed with it, but he had fun. We went and saw the barnyard animals, the Flamingos, theTigers, the Monkeys, the Elephants, and we saw a Giraffe but I don't think he saw it because it was too far away. We realized half way through we needed to pick out the exhibits with bigger more active animals he could actually pinpoint out. We went to the bug exhibit which was a waste of time. Lily enjoyed the whole experience too, she looked in complete wonderment the whole time and was very happy. I actually want to go again, but this time to Point Defiance and with a couple helpers. I spent my summers as a kid going there and I like it much better than Woodland Park.

Here are some pictures for better or worse...

This is when we got to the Zoo, Morgan had just woken up.