Cleveland Zoo- June.

I feel like we keep getting farther and farther behind on these updates. Last Tuesday, we went tot he Cleveland Zoo. Seriously, GG and GG, we had no idea so much fun stuff was within 20 minutes of your house!

No doubt the first stop at the zoo was the robotic dinosaur exhibit. Looking round, mama. But this picture does mark a major milestone- we're all looking in the same direction, even if we aren't smiling. (Notice that Henry is wearing a hat. Normally, Henry refuses to where anything that could be construed as a costume. Halloween is a major chore. He won't even wear a Silly Band and I guess those bracelets are all the rage. But he knows that papa wears his hat to baseball games and will now sometimes wear his hat too.)

Henry and I love dinosaurs. While I like to climb and hug dinosaurs, Henry has a healthy respect for their strength (and ability to eat you), even if he does know they aren't real. There are a lot of graphic dinosaur books out there.

This exhibit was very cool because the dinosaurs were set back in the woods, so the whole thing looked very real. There were even a few we didn't see until we heard their calls. We wouldn't have lasted long 300 million years ago. I loved these baby Igaunodons that were just hatching from their shells.

The T-Rex was especially convincing.

At the end of the walk were Dilophosaurus that spit water (not poison).

This was a big hit for all the kids.

Of course, Henry had nothing to do with it, but I got in on the action. The whole dinosaur exhibit was so fun, we walked through it three times before we decided to check out the rest of the zoo.

It's a pretty well known fact that going to the zoo with Henry isn't that much fun. He gets a hold of a map and spends the whole time directing us where to go next and the fastest way to get there. He spends about 2 seconds looking at animals before he returns to the stroller to consult his compass and map and chastise us for taking too long. While mama struggled with Henry, papa got some good shots of the animals. I guess there was a baby giraffe there, but mama was fighting Henry over whether or nor he need to hold two identical maps open at the same time.

Things got better for Henry after lunch when we decided to ride the tram to the Northern Animals section. Thanks for the hat, Grams!

Real chaos started when we found out that the entire Northern section was reachable only by tram (after we got there). We had intended to ride the tram there and walk back to the front as the zoo isn't that big. Unfortunately, the construction on the huge bridge over the zoo closed off the road between the Northern Animals and the rest of the zoo. This distressed Henry because it was not indicated on the map and he really wanted to walk under the bridge. It added some extra time to the trip, but we did get to take the tram back again.

Lucky for you, I love the zoo and spent all day doing incredibly cute things, so there are lots of pictures of me.

The sled dog Balto lived at the Cleveland zoo in the 1920s. Now there's a statue of him at the wolf exhibit.

"Doggy! Heh-heh-heh."

This bear knew it was too hot for Cleveland in late May so he took a swim. (Mama still remembers when it snowed on May 22nd in Cleveland when she was in college.)

To make a hot day longer, mama left out water bottles on the kitchen table, so we were pretty parched. Grams got us an Icee and we downed it in about 20 seconds. We were fading fast, but mama and papa promised we could head over to Australia to ride the train that was prominently featured on the map (and the only place i wanted to see all day).

Getting ready for some fun.

While we were on the train, mama scored us a Cleveland Zoo water bottle. We refilled it 4 times and felt much better. I hitched a ride with papa and we decided to visit one more exhibit.

I really liked the birds when we visited the Columbia Zoo, so we decided to give feeding the Lorikeets a try. You buy a tiny cup of nectar and get a long talk about letting the birds do what they want, even if they land on you, before they let you into the bird house. Bubba held up the cup and the birds came straight to him.

Grams held me up so I could see a bird up close.

While our bird was licking out nectar, another lorikeet swooped in and stole the cup right out of Henry's hand! He held it with one foot and flew back over to a tree to drink the rest himself. Henry didn't seem to mind that the bird stole his cup and spilled half of the nectar, but did point out that he wasn't very polite when he took the cup from the other bird. And in case you're wondering, all the cups are made from corn, so they are biodegradable. So we didn't worry when the bird dropped the cup. From the looks of the ground, I think this lorikeet stole quite a few cups.

Here's a sweaty tired kid who had a pretty fun day despite his keen attention to detail and lack of interest in animals. We didn't get to everything in the zoo so we have a good excuse to go back the next time we're in town.