Horse!

I'm so behind on pictures that these are now from at least a week ago, maybe two (three?!).

The kids and I met Grandma and Olivia at the zoo one of the warm afternoons. I think this was probably Gussie's first trip to the zoo since he has become so fascinated with all animals. He was in heaven.

He was also extremely worked up and wanted to see everything, and is in a phase where he would much rather walk than ride in the stroller. Plus it was Spring Break for some of the city so the zoo was packed packed packed.

All this adds up to me completely losing sight of Gussie for about 60 seconds, but I'm guessing my heart blew through about four years of its available resources in that minute. Mary wanted her picture on the giant beetle.

And then Olivia wanted to climb up.

And somewhere between those two attempts at pictures, Gussie wandered off to find the source of that choo-choo. I learned a long time ago how much putting my eye to the camera viewfinder limits my wandering toddler awareness, but somehow in the midst of a spring-break busy zoo, I forgot Gussie wasn't buckled into the stroller. I seriously think my brain is slowing down. {Last week I took three kids to swim lessons with zero swimsuits.} But thankfully Gussie didn't wander far and a brief parting of the crowd brought him back into view.

But other than Gussie's solo zoo viewing, we had a very fun trip. Right now Gus knows two words for animals: bird and horse. Everything that flies or hops is a bird, and everything that looks mammal-ish is a horse. So he spent a good part of the trip pointing excitedly and shouting "Horse!" at every animal we saw.

Elephant? Nope. Horse.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon so a lot of the animals were taking an afternoon nap. Usually one of our favorite stops is to watch the hippos swim around, but this day we only saw the one, snoozing in the sun.

This bear was trying to get in a good nap also. The kids all thought he was hilarious.

On our way out, we debated waiting in line for the sea lion tunnel. The girls voted no, but Michael Jr voted yes and it was his day, so we waited. They were all happy in the end because one little sea lion (or is this the seal?) was very friendly. She kept swimming laps past the tunnel, and every time she got close to it she would nose her way all along the glass.

Gussie must have been undecided about whether it was a bird or a horse, so he just nosed his way along the glass as well.