I've added the complete zoo pix to the photo site. For now, here are a couple more photos...

Today we packed up the car and headed to the San Francisco Zoo. The drive turned out to be just a bit too long... it' s awfully hard to wait when you have such anticipation and you're three. David napped for most of the drive there, which was great because it gave us more time to play at the zoo. The kids had a good time visiting the animals once we were there.

We first saw the giraffes which turned out to be Isabelle's favorite part. She had some trouble picking out her clothes and wanted my "help" but didn't want to wear anything I chose. So I picked out this cute white shirt with green stripes and a big apple on it and told her that maybe the giraffe would see the apple and come close for a nibble. Well, you know that she never forgets a thing, so as soon as we saw the giraffes, (which turned out to be really close), she unzipped her jacket and was holding out her shirt to make sure they could see it. She wanted to get into the pen with them. Here's our daughter who is usually intimidated by anything much bigger than herself wanting to walk right up to these gi-normous animals. Go figure...


David would have jumped over every fence to run right up to any creature we saw. The boy has no fear of anything. He also really loves birds and flowers and spent the day pointing at the birds and yelling "birdy! birdy!!" and making his best attempt at bird sounds. He also wanted to see and smell and probably tear apart every flower he saw. He was so excited he was wild and didn't know what to do with himself.


They has a terrific time at the petting zoo part. They got to pet sheep and goats and see other farm animals. That was a big hit.


We only got through about a fourth of the zoo. It's really huge. I am not fond of zoos but would actually recommmend this one. It's beautifully landscaped and accessible, and the animals we saw looked happy and in pretty healthy and natural environments. Some of the large birds had been placed at the zoo because they had been injured and couldn't return to the wild. That's not a bad life considering the other options for them...

We also found out that there's camp ground there! We're going to check that out. How cool for pretty good camping to only be a short distance away... we'd have the zoo, the ocean, the city and some really cool places to hike around. I love San Francisco.

David is saying new words and doing better with his talking. he tries to say anything that you say to him if you phrase it," David, can you say..." He can't say Isabelle yet, but calls her "Belle, belle". He can say bubbles, Dadda, flower, blueberries, please, thank you, brown bear, breakfast. I think those are the newest words.

He's in a growth spurt now and getting so big!!

Ever since David fell and hurt his mouth, Isabelle has been in desperate need of attention. This makes sense from a 3 year old's point of view... if I hurt myself or at least pretend that I am critically wounded I will get loads of attention and snuggling... so we give it to her. I have explained how we shouldn't pretend to be hurt when we aren't really hurt and even told the "boy who cried wolf" story. She didn't really get the moral of the story. She just thought it was a good story I made up. So I decided that just telling her that she can ask me to spend time with her when she needs extra mommy time and I can do that.

Tonight I got home in time to read stories and put her to bed. I love these days when she wants me to sleep with her and snuggle and sing forever. So she scoots way over in her bed and says "here mommy, there's room for you," and I get to lay down close. Tonight I asked her if she knows how much I love her and she said "yes, to the moon and back."

Isabelle has taken the role of mother to daycare, and cares for some of the other kids. She is so maternal already! She reads other kids stories, and gets their stuffed animal comfort toy when they fall or are upset about something. She does that for David at home too. She also feeds the other kids, and her new favorite thing to do is hug. She doesn't hug everyone all the time, but she and one of her 'boyfriends' will hug off and on throughout the day. And it seems to come at odd times. For instance, they will be running around the yard at daycare, in their usual crazy circle kinda shape, then one of them will stop, and a hug ensues. Then it's back to running, climbing, hiding, drawing, etc.

Isabelle has also taken to playing 'This little Piggy' with David. Sometimes it just becomes a big gigglefest, and I don't hear anything about piggies, just two very happy children. But then after 15 or 20 minutes of doing something else, the competition comes back, and sharing ends, or someone gets pushed. Oh well.



David had his first major accident. He's never had very good balance and has taken a few nasty tumbles, but this latest one loosened some teeth and caused our daycare provider a minor heart attack. Apparently it was just a regular day of running around giggling when David tripped on some uneven ground and fell mouth first into the concrete. I got the dreaded call at work. Me: "Is everything ok?", Daycare: "um, well, no... David fell." Me: "How bad is it?" Daycare: "Um, well, there looks like a lot of blood, but it's mixed with saliva..." Me: One of us will be right there."



We ended up taking him to the dentist the next morning and things appear to be mostly ok. The x-ray shows that there's no fractures of the root or tooth and they expect that the loose teeth will recover in a couple of weeks. It looks swollen and sore and awful to me, as a Mom and a person who doesn't deal well with tooth problems thanks to a terrible childhood dentist. Anyway. David doesn't really seem to be that bothered by it and is eating and drinking normally. And he is active as ever, giving us all mild heart attacks on a daily basis. He's a such a little trooper and did so well at the dentist. We're so proud of him. He's going to grow up to do wonderful, important things!