Family time at the Zoo

This past Sunday, Andy and I took Lailah to the Zoo. We were fortunate to see the Dinosaurs as part of the Zoorasic Park Exhibit, and Lailah thought that was pretty rad being a huge fan of dino’s. She has a Triceratops, a Velociraptor, and a Stegosaurus and she absolutely knows which one is which. It was quite entertaining to see children about 5 years her senior screaming and crying hysterically around them while little Lailah in her stroller looked at up them like whazup, and looked at the children like what the hell is your problem.

Her animal recognition blows my mind. We could be in the living room and the TV could be on, and say they mention a Zebra, or better yet, they don’t even mention or show a Zebra but show a white and black stripe pattern similar to that of a zebra - she will high step it out of the room, into her room and emerge with a stuffed zebra. She does this on a near daily basis; I really need to get video of it. Off the top of my head the animals I can think of that she recognizes include; bears (polar, brown and panda), flamingo, crocodile, hamster, giraffe, goat, pig, rhinoceros, horse, duck, cow, owl, birds (various species), gazelle, ladybug, turtle, elephant, whale, fish, tiger, lion, frog, jaguar, cat, dog, et al. These are just some of the ones that she has, if you throw them in a giant pile and name one, she will find it, never fails. And she learns things just from saying it once, it’s amazing.

Anyway enough of tooting the ol’ horn, here are a few pics of the day:

Some other new things:

• She points to the Moon in the morning and says moon – I then ask her “where’s Venus?” and she points to it
• The other day she sing-songly said Grrraaanndmmaa – but god forbid if Andy and I can get her to say it again
• She’s got the ‘no’ head shake down to a T – but we are still working on the ‘yes’ head shake
• When she’s eating she’s now hell bent on using utensils; she’s getting it, but it’s an arduous clean-up process after dinner these days
• She’s learned to tip-toe and ‘fly away like a bird’
• She’s started saying Wwoooww in a deep long drawn-out cadence that immediately immerses me in a bout of laughter
• She picks her nose – well her right nostril anyway, it’s lovely
• She’s truly a land bound aquatic animal, and I am convinced that if possible she would live her life in the water - she thinks the bathtub is one of life’s greatest gifts… I can’t wait to show her the sea someday
• Her top teeth continue to come in, and the gap in between them warms my heart
• She’s started grabbing my hand and pulling me along to wherever…aw mon amour
• She’s full of jibber jabber, her conversations consist of something along the lines of; yub dab dub dub, si si sha, dab a, sen sen, na na nie nie, neh.
• She is the BEST ignorer on the face of the planet!!!
• She has started walking backwards and she loves to twirl and twirl and twirl and twirl…you get the idea
• When outside she makes a determined march to the tomato plants where she finds a juicy tomato that’s ripe and red and bites into likes it’s an apple, spits out the skin and continues to devour the inside – seeds and juice all down the front of her, check it out:

She is simply the best.