The Zoo, and Panda Bear book video

Jonathan, Ellison, Marcy, and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo last weekend. Elle absolutely loved it, you would have thought that it was her first time there. Ellison enjoyed the giraffes, rhinos, and swinging monkeys (sorry no pics), and also loved getting up close to all of the fish! She also talked about the baby lions a lot - however they were far from being babies, just too far away to notice their actual size.

Here she is showing her Grandma the fish. She counted all "3" of them!

The (baby) Lions!

- I guess the distance along with the large rocks they sat on might make their actual size deceiving. Anyway, we hung out by them for a while since the male kept standing up looking like he was going to roar, but unfortunately we just watched them enjoy the lovely day quietly.

More fish! Again, she counted 1-2-3!

The best part of all, the Merry-Go-Round! Elle specifically picked out the panda bear eating the bamboo (she has watched a Wonder Pets episode where a baby panda bear was stuck up in a bamboo tree with a belly ache from eating too much bamboo)! She loved how she was going both up and down, as we went round and round! Ellison has raved about the Zoo/Merry-Go-Round all week...talking about how she rode the panda bear and that Grandma sat with her, and Mommy rode the zebra!


This video is from the morning before we went to the zoo - Even though we didn't see any real Panda Bears at the Zoo, it seemed to be a theme of the day.
Elle was taking longer than normal on the toilet, so I brought her some books to occupy her as I was getting ready. I stopped in my tracks when I overheard her reading the book "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" This was already her 2nd time through and I just caught the ending, then she paged through backwards.

If you are unable to hear/understand here is a translation:
"...turtle, panda bear, that's what I see. Oh, I missed a page. That's a spider monkey, that's a water bufla alo, that's a ... that's a ...that's a eagle, that's a panda bear, that's what I see. Mommy!"

I wished I would have recorded her reading the whole thing, I was frozen just listening to her with a huge smile on my face. Then I thought, I have to get the camera and record this so Jonathan can see (he was out riding his bike). So happy I caught this little bit.

Here are 2 funny stories that I HAVE to share:
1. Elle was playing with some keys she found a while back (she says the keys are for Grandma's house). She goes to get a laundry basket, which she flips upside down to stand on, and proceeds to lock and unlock our bathroom door (she can actually do it, and the keys aren't even made for any of the doors to our house). Any way, I should also mention that she had been watching an "Abby-ca-dabby movie" -spell? recently (if you don't know Abby-ca-dabby, she is a little fairy friend of Elmo's from Sesame Street). After having a little trouble unlocking the door, after locking and unlocking for over 30 minutes, she said to me... "if I only had my wand, I would poof my way in"!

2. Elle was in the tub the other night coloring with her bathtub crayons. The colors we had out happened to be blue, red, and yellow. She is very good with her colors, with exception to yellow - she gets it mixed up with green sometimes. I had colored Elmo (in red), Cookie Monster (in blue) and Big Bird (in yellow). Next, I went down the line and asked her what color each character was, she got red/Elmo, blue/Cookie Monster, then she was stumped at Big Bird. Soon she answered... "lemon flavored"!

She has really been cracking us up lately with the things she says! It's crazy, she is turning 2 in 5 days, and she already has quite a vocabulary! Some of her other famous lines that we hear often are:

• "I have an idea"
• "Mom/Dad, that's not right"
• "I'm too big" (when she is actually too small to do something)
• "I'm mak'in some" (when she is on the toilet)
• "there's rain-deer poop outside" (talking about the deer droppings in our backyard)
• "the ladybug/spider won't get you" (when she is worried about an insect/spider near her)
• "I want to do it by my self"!