Shelly the tortoise

Our local zoo has a storytime every weekend and while we don't make it all the time, the kids really enjoy it when we do get over there.  They usually read a short story but the highlight of the visit is the animal they bring to introduce to the kids.  This week was a 27 year old yellow footed tortoise named Shelly :)

Another day at the zoo

The kids got to "meet" a Bearded Dragon at the zoo's storytime today. Only Iz was brave enough to go up and pet her, though :p  Last week, we were the only family at storytime but this week there were a bunch of families.  All the kids were posing with the bearded dragon so their parents could take pictures but poor Iz had to pass up a photo op because I left my phone in the car and didn't have my actual camera on me :p  So no pictures of today's trip to the zoo.  We didn't stay long because it was hot but we did remember the stroller so we went to the far side to see zebras and giraffes and the ostriches :)

Saturdays at the zoo

On Saturdays, our local zoo has a storytime session for the kids.  They read a book and then get to meet a zoo animal.  This week was Sammy the Star Tortoise--they got to pet him and learn all about what makes Sammy special.  The highlight of the visit?  Sammy pooped.   Yep, you heard that right--they most enjoyed the part where Sammy pooped.  Not his neat domed star shell.  Not the spines on his front legs.  Not his beak.  His poop.  *sigh* KIDS.

We spent a little bit of time walking around and seeing some of the favorite animals.  First and last stop on our trip was the koalas.  They were sleeping both times we were there but the kids were still pretty excited to see them in person

We were there during Zookeeper talks so we got to learn some extra facts about koalas and then tigers in the next exhibit.  The Zoo Educator at the tiger exhibit pulled no punches for the young ages of my children so now my five  year old knows that tigers will suffocate their prey with their strong jaws if they can't break its neck right away.  Now, my 12 year old was fascinated by this but perhaps the five year old could have lived with just petting the fur and looking at the skull and teeth :p

W's favorite is always the red panda.  It will run up to the glass and have a look at whoever is out there and then go back and forth.  W would stand there forever if you let him

The Busy Little B likes to go into the "Tortoise Tunnel" in the children's play area and peek at me:

W was on foot this trip instead of the stroller so we were limited in how long we could stay before he started to get tired.  We need to remember the stroller next time for the hike out to the Savannah exhibit so the kids can see the giraffes :)

It was a beautiful day!

We finally had some gorgeous weather so I told the kids if they got all their chores done, we'd go to the zoo.  Guess who got their chores done?

Before we moved, we were about an hour drive from the local zoo so whenever we went, we planned to stay there for hours and see as much zoo as we could because it would be a while before we came back.  So we would either bring food/drink  or occasionally get something there.  Now, though, we are just a few minutes away so we can stop in whenever we want, even if its just half an hour to walk about a bit.  The kids are still in "must be there all day" mode and they asked me so many times for snacks and drinks I finally told them that if one more person asks me to buy them something, I was taking them all home :p  If they are so hungry and thirsty that they just have to have something right now (even though we had eaten lunch right before we left and had been all of an hour since we'd arrived), we can just go home and have a snack and end our trip for the day.  Yeah, they suddenly were no longer hungry, we spent another thirty minutes at the zoo and then another thirty at the natural history museum, and then headed for home because they were closing :p  We have a yearly pass so the zoo and museum can be free and fun things to do--kinda defeats the purpose if I'm spending a ton on stuff while there!

What happens when you finally get some decent weather?

You run for it and find something outdoorsy to do!  We've had a patch of warmer weather but with all the snow and ice melting, it has been far too muddy to do much of anything outside.  We decided to drop by the zoo and take advantage of their non-muddy and non-flooded paths ;)  It was warm enough to be out but not warm enough to be out for long but the kids didn't care--we told them we'd come back when it was warmer to see more and would just do a small loop that day.  They were so excited just to be there that they didn't even put up a fight about leaving after half an hour :)

First stop was the Dwarf Mongoose.  The kids thought they were so small and adorable.  Mr. Piper and I couldn't stop asking each other "Are them mongooses?"  (Have you seen the Snoop Dogg video narrating the Mongoose/crocodile encounter?  It is my favorite and no matter how many times I see it, I laugh and laugh and laugh.....).

Baby W's favorite was the tiger.  It was very active and vocalizing and W insisted we go back to look at him again before we left.

There is a buffalo farm (ranch?) a few miles from us but its hard to see them clearly driving past so the kids were pretty excited that we were able to get up close to a small herd:

The Adventures of Duck, Trip Three Day Two

Duck started his day much earlier than we did!  Because school is on holiday, we slept in (sort of.  These kids don't actually sleep in but they did watch cartoons so mom didn't have to get out of bed so early so.....).  Duck, however, was up before the sun and on his way!

Baby W had physical therapy at home so Duck had time to send us a few pictures on the road before we got going ourselves.

The kids decided today was a perfect day to send Dad their own Duck photos so Army Duck came along.

It was a beautiful day so we took Army Duck to the zoo! Because the tiger was Baby W's favorite last time, we went to see him first and Iz held Army Duck so he could get his picture taken with the tiger (basking in the sun in the background):

Our next big stop was the farm where Baby W discovered another favorite--the red pandas.  They were really active so he really enjoyed watching them :)

Miss Iz was fascinated by the porcupine:

All the Big Kids decided to show Army Duck they are family so they hatched from an egg with him ;)

The goats were fun to watch--one kept putting his head through the "window".  The kids fed him some treats and we petted him and even after we ran out of treats, he kept pushing his face to the window and enjoying some ear scratches.

A lot of the animals were off exhibit because even though it was a nice day, it wasn't nice enough for them yet.  But some had their winter quarters open so we could still go in and see them.  This tortoise was on the move while we were there and he moved a lot faster than I thought he would!

The giraffes were outside in their winter pens enjoying the sunshine.  I'll bet they'll be glad to move back to the big Savannah area when the warmth comes back, though :)

Another exhibit we spent a long time at because Baby W loved it was the meerkats :)  They were all over the place and made him laugh with their running and jumping and wrestling.

And of course my Busy Little B couldn't resist a silly pose :)

Baby W spent most of the trip in his stroller--he can walk a good distance but we covered over three miles and that is too much for him :p  He spent a good portion of the ride like this:

It look so uncomfortable to me!  But he used to sit in his high chair with at least one leg up on the tray.  His OT thinks it might be because his hip flexors are tight and so holding his legs down and together to sit properly might not feel the best.  We have been working on stretching and aligning his hips and he rarely puts his foot up on the high chair tray anymore but I guess he needed those feet up for his long ride.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

The randomness of my mind, in bullet-point form!

• School got off to a rather harried beginning.  B's bus is supposed to come at the same time I have to be driving S to his school.  So I enlisted the help of my Dad who puts B on the morning bus for me.  I get B ready to go, take his first day of school pictures, and leave him waiting on the corner with my Dad while I take S to school.  S's school does not have bus service so all kids are dropped off.  Doors open ten minutes before class starts and let me tell you, that isn't enough time to get all the cars through the drop-off line so there are always kids getting dropped off after school has begun because we've been sitting in the line for ten minutes.  First day of school is even more insane because so many want to park in a very very very tiny lot and take the kids inside to do pictures and stuff.  I take the pictures at home and I drop my kid off at the door just as we do every other "normal" day because it is INSANITY.  People were parking in the drop off lane so it was really hard to get through.  Took about twenty minutes to get in and out of the lot. I go back home and B and my Dad are STILL at the corner.  *sigh*  Apparently they added B to the bus route too late and the driver didn't know to come get him so I drove him to school and was assured that all would go smoothly after school and the bus would be here at four.  Nope.  They put him on the wrong bus.  The driver didn't know what to do with him, didn't even have an address for him, and she didn't even have any stops in our neighborhood.  When his bus didn't show up by 4:10, I called transportation and by the time they figured out where he was and had the bus drive over to our house, it was 4:45.  You know, if that had happened to S, I wouldn't have thought too much of it because kids get on the wrong bus sometimes. But B is a special needs student in a special needs classroom riding a special needs bus.  He always has an adult with him--they take him off the bus and escort him to the classroom and then he's to be escorted from classroom to bus.  While his speech has improved, he is still limited in his communication abilities and the bus driver couldn't understand much beyond his name and asking the aide to sit with him.  This is most definitely a mistake that should never have happened :|  He is not supposed to be on a regular bus and gosh, it sure does scare me to think he could have gotten off at a regular bus stop as part of the crowd :(  The head of the special needs transportation section got involved and it has gone smoothly the rest of the week.
• S's personal goal for the last year or so has been to read a Magic Treehouse book himself.  He is finally at he point where his skills are high enough that he has begun reading one of the shorter ones to me for his nightly reading time.  He is so proud of himself and I'm so proud of him!  He has worked really hard to get better and it shows.  He is hoping maybe he can catch up to his classmates this year and be on grade level by the time school is out (he is behind several years and gets extra help at school one-on-one.  Part of his neuropsych testing shows two learning disabilities in reading and math).
• Izzy had her rescheduled neurology appointment (they had called me the day of her appointment last month because her doctor had a medical emergency--turns out it was for the birth of his daughter :)  And excellent reason to reschedule your patients!).  When she started the trileptal, the improvements were swift--she was more coordinated, her speech was better, her falling episodes were much further apart and sometimes not as severe.  She was still having some seizure activity but not even close to what it was before.  But the last month or so, she's been having some odd things happen that I wasn't sure was even connected to neurology but I told him about it anyway, just in case.  The major thing is that most of the time she speaks fairly clearly and then sometimes she sounds like she is speaking another language.  Repeating herself or asking her to slow down doesn't seem to help.  Other times, she will get "stuck" and repeat the same syllable (or two) over and over.  Neuro says that sometimes when you start seizure meds and you get the main seizures to stop or at least be less severe, you might find minor seizure activity spreading to nearby areas of the brain.  The unusual activity in Izzy's brain is very close to her speech centers and he believes that the episodes of incomprehensibility and getting "stuck" are minor seizures, especially since she is still having random absence/focal seizures.  So we upped her meds and will see if this new dose is high enough to bring them to a stop.  We are going to slowly up her dose until we hit a level where she is seizure free. 
• Izzy has fallen in love with Garfield--if I would let her, she would just watch Garfield cartoons all day long :p  I should track down some Garfield stuff for her upcoming birthday (four more days!!)
• We went to the zoo last weekend and now Izzy is convinced every time we leave the house that I am taking her to see the "namimals"

Fun at the zoo :)

It was a really hot day (and today I have my furnace on--what's up, Mother Nature?) so we spent a lot of time in the Bird House since most of the rooms are kept fairly cool.  When you first walk in, you are in a large L-shaped room with lots of different birds.  The benches (see the background of this pic of Iz) have bird feet and my kids get a kick out of those every single time we go.  And we ALWAYS have to sit on the "bird benches", at least for a few minutes :)


One of S's favorites is the owl--he is always dozing up on a branch when we come and we have to watch him for a while to see if he wakes up ;)  You can just barely see him up at the top of the photo to the right.  S got some little pocket pals as souvenirs and he wanted a picture of his favorite one (a hatching turtle) and the owl but unfortunately, it was one or the other ;)

Even with the cooler air inside the Bird House, my busy little B was still hot hot hot.  I call him my sweaty little man because this kid sweats all the time.  His preschool has even had to change his shirt before because of all the sweating :\  Poor kid takes after me--hot all the time!  Everyone else will be huddled under blankets and he and I are turning on the fan LOL 

One of our favorite rooms in the Bird House is the large open-air aviary.  There is a short fence bordering the walkway to keep people from traipsing all over the room but most of the birds are free to do as they please.  Iz just walks up and down the path, stopping to peek through the fence or screech BIRD and point at the flying ones.  B likes to stay in one spot and just stare at whatever birds come closest to him.  And S likes to go talk to the bird that is caged because he likes to bite people (he needs the company, Mom.  Most people don't stop to say hi to him). 

I think my favorite picture of Iz from that day is one of her in the large open aviary, walking down the path, swinging her arms side to side while she tries to imitate bird calls :) 

Now the boys, I couldn't decide on just one favorite picture so I have two picked out :)  They kept insisting on posing together so both are a "brothers" shot :)  First, they are in front of a giant inflatable elephant :)  May is the birthday of Louie, a male elephant born at the zoo (I want to say seven years ago?  Maybe eight?  I don't remember exactly) and every year they throw a party for him.  Elephants are my favorite thing to see and it has rubbed off on the boys and they are always excited to go see the elephants, especially now that there is another little baby elephant born last year :)  The second photo S calls "walking on water."  There is a wooden walkway/bridge that curls up over the hippo exhibit and a window on the floor lets you look down into the exhibit and possibly see the hippos again if they are in that area.  The boys love to look through the window and then stand on it LOL 

The Bird

At our local Zoo, there is this rather large gray bird who lives in the last room of the Bird House.  I am not sure what kind of bird he is since I always forget to check out the sign but he appears to be a ground bird as I have never seen him up in the trees, always running about down on the floor of the enclosure.  He is loud and has a very distinctive "rawk!" that he belts out every single time he sees our little Izzy-bug.  She LOVES this bird so so so much :)  She can't wait to go into this room and run over to the enclosure to see "her" birdie and she rawks back at him and they have a good talk.

There are some new birds in the enclosure and so the windows are all painted a translucent white--you can still see the birds but the white ensures the new ones know the window is there.  There are several areas where the paint has been wiped off so you can get a clear look at the birds and Iz and the bird both made a beeline for a clear patch so they could stare at each other :)  He is a little hard to see in this picture because of the paint but he is the big gray thing to her left.  I really need to remember to check his sign and get a good picture of him :) 

Iz and her bird