It's a zoo out there

I felt amazing yesterday. I woke up feeling well=rested and energized. It was a rare day for this third trimester girl. I got up. Got Smasher breakfast and then awoken The Hubby. I wanted to go to a zoo!

Luckily, The Hubby has Wednesdays off and lately I've been feeling like we really need to spend as much time with Smasher as possible while he's still an only child. I've been wanting to take him to the zoo for awhile now. He's gone before with his dad and his Apple but never with me and I was getting a little down about that. While it was not perfect weather wise yesterday, we packed a few sandwiches, a couple of sippy cups and bottles of water and headed off to Wichita. We tried once before to go to the Wichita zoo but ended up going on the only day of the year that it was closed. That was back in September. We made the best out of that day and The Hubby and I agree that that is when we fell in love. It was one of the best days of my life, but I still wanted to go to the zoo. The weather forecast for Wichita was a high in the mid-50s and some rain, but that didn't deter us one bit. We got there before the rain and in the three hours we were there it really only rained on us for about 15 minutes. The Wichita zoo has a great children's area where there are three different farms. An Asian farm, and American farm and an African farm. Smasher loved those because sheep and goats would walk right up to you and a couple even nibbled on his shoe. The Hubby has been playing Zelda lately and found a chicken to chase. It was cute. Smasher and I both laughed. We then got followed by a peacock for a while. Smasher saw lots of ducks and can now say duck to go along with his quacking that occasionally makes an appearance in his high chair. We went and saw tigers (which is Smasher's favorite animal) and we were kind of disappointed because, while everything was out (well almost) they were all sleeping. I think the coolest thing was the gorillas though. We went to the gorilla habitat and were the only ones in there. I was getting extremely worn out by this point so we sat in there for a little while. A gorilla with two fist fulls of hay comes up to the window right in front of Smasher and just sits there for 15 minutes eating his lunch. It was awesome! Smasher was riveted. As we left he even blew kisses (his new favorite thing) to the gorilla. He was so good all day yesterday and I know he was getting really tired on the way home. I did pretty well for being 31 and a half weeks pregnant. We made it through the entire zoo. However, I am really glad we didn't wait to go. I don't think I would have lasted much longer.

One of my biggest things as a mom, is educating my children to be kind, respectful and eager to learn about everything! I think making trips to places like zoos and museums and concerts (in a couple of years) is a way to do that. Just watching Smasher "ooh and Ahh" over the animals is worth dragging my huge pregnant butt all over the 16th largest zoo in the US. It's worth getting rained on for the last 15-30 minutes of our trek. It's worth sitting in a car for 4 hours round trip. I'm going to miss him being an only child. I'm excited about 8 and I know they are going to have so much fun together but I'm going to miss days like yesterday where it was just me, The Hubby and my Smasher. I think we'll go back to the zoo sometime in the late summer/early fall just because I don't want him to forget all of the things we saw (and I like zoos) but next time will be dramatically different. His sister will be with us and while our family is going to an amazing and close family, I will miss the way things are right now.