We decided that Saturday would be different.
So we stayed in our hotel room till AFTER nap time. Lovely breakfast, lovely playtime, lovely (and long) nap time. Dave watched football (the TV was on mute so as not to wake the baby) (his motions and comments were also on mute...which was incredibly funny to watch.). I spent a little time on the computer, and then I took a nap, too. YAY for Mama. :o)
Then when she woke up, we checked out of our hotel room, had some lunch, and then went to the San Diego Zoo.
Our first stop was, of course, the ducks. Our girl quack-quacks all the live-long day, but put her near some actual quacking and she went crazy! :o)
And we went around the corner and saw birds, and various monkeys, and other strange creatures.
And, other scary sights...
Mookie didn't know what to think of that orangutan image, there. It was nothing like the picture of the orangutan mama and baby in her book at home! :o) (I didn't get the photo of her running back to me with her arms stretched out...)
Next we saw the sleeping hippos, who would periodically swim to the other side of their tiny little pond. And swim back. Mookie kept signing "fish" -- she's a bit young, yet, to understand that not everything that swims is a fish. :o) But I will say that it's doggone cute when she signs, well, pretty much anything. :o)
And then we saw sleeping tigers. She "roared" for the first time Saturday...no thanks to the sleeping tigers, though! Mostly it was Mama, and all the other little boys roaring, trying to wake up the sleeping tiger to get it to roar back. :o) Didn't work, but it was worth a shot!
Next we saw the pandas (who weren't sleeping, which was a surprise!) (pretty much everyone at the zoo was napping since it was so dadgum hot!), and some other big cats, and then we went to the highly-publicized elephant exhibit. Mookie was excited to see the elephants spray water on themselves to cool off. Sadly, they didn't roar during their cool-down time, so the sound effects she heard up there were kinda up to me. :o)
Dave was similarly excited to see the (sleeping) lions.
He also tried to rouse them by roaring, but I think the thick glass kept The King from being disturbed. :o)
Then we stopped in one of the few toddler-friendly play areas for a bit of running around Mama-free.
Then back down the hill, past the camels, and back to our starting point. The Ducks. By now there was a band playing near the ducks, so Mookie would alternate between quacking with her new friends, and dancing. It was quite the show.
And, finally, we enjoyed a lovely dinner in the zoo's fancy restaurant, and headed north. Mookie was asleep before we were out of the parking lot.
I still can't decide which (as a mama) I liked more -- Sea World or the zoo. Sea World has the Sesame Street Bay of Play, and the aquarium, and the other interactions with animals, but I think it was a bit too...distant...for Mookie. Yes, there were fish on the other side of that plexiglass wall, but she didn't seem to interact with the wildlife as much as she did at the zoo. The way the zoo is laid out, there were a bunch of trails, and we let her out of her stroller A LOT. She wanted to push the stroller quite a bit, too (which, I don't need to tell you, is adorable!!) And she could hear the animals (when they weren't sawing logs). And she could quack and roar and tweet with them. There weren't as many toddler-friendly play areas at the zoo, but I kinda think the whole thing is a pretty toddler-friendly play area. And there were quite a few other stroller-bound toddlers at the zoo, where at Sea World, it seemed like mostly bigger folks.
All in all, though, minus the vomitting, we had a good time, and hope to go back next spring.
I wonder if Grandpa Grouper will still be at Sea World. And if Mookie will remember him. :o)
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