We do child/parent dates every so often and the last one I had the pleasure of taking Mya to the zoo. She was so excited to go and had very specific places she wanted to go. Starting with the elephants, then on to the giraffes, and then to the hippos. That was the plan at least.
We got there and went to the elephants as planned and the elephant was splashing water at the onlookers. Mya was intrigued. She says her favorite animal is elephants. Mya stood and watched the elephant for a while but would not turn around to get a good picture with her face. I decided to just take a picture of her watching. We then went around to the other side to see if any other elephants were out and got a big surprise. Right as we started watching the elephant decided to go to the bathroom. Mya was grossed out.
We then moved on to head to the giraffes. On the way we passed a big fan with water spraying out to cool you down. Before Mya was not a big fan of this (pun intended). She really liked it this time around though. She jumped out of the stroller and danced around in the ‘fog’ as she called it. After a bit we moved on to the giraffes.
At the giraffes you can feed them, and that is what Mya wanted to do. When we got up to them she was not happy about it and decided that she did not want to any more and that we should move on. So on we went, I convinced her to head to the lions but we got side tracked by some flamingos and on to the lions.
The flamingo was really close to the fence and moving its head back and forth while making some loud noises. Mya usually does not like loud noises but she enjoyed it and wanted to get closer. We then went on to visit the lions. They were all tired out and laying down close to the glass. Mya liked it but was not sure about the big lion being so close to her even though there was glass in between them. We stayed there a bit while Mya watched and then she decided to move on to the hippos.
On our way to the hippos we ran across a demonstration of an armadillo. The little guy was running around in a pen that all the kids could stand around and watch. Mya enjoyed watching the little guy run and push things around. We stayed there for a bit and Mya moved around to get different view points and didn’t want to leave just yet. After a while we were able to leave and head on to the hippos.
We walked all of the way to the hippos. Mya was excited and asking about the babyhippo and what its name was. I kept telling her it was baby Fiona. We finally got there to a bunch of people just watching an empty exhibit.
The hippos were out of the exhibit while they cleaned it. We waited around for a bit and I put Mya up on my shoulders so that she could see better. After a bit she got tired and we left without seeing the hippos, bummer. I asked her were to next and showed her the map and pointed to different animal locations, she wanted to goto the wolves.
We headed on towards the wolves and ran into the train going by. Mya immediately wanted to ride the train. There was a long line so I
explained to her that we would have to wait a while for the train. She didn’t care and wanted to wait. We waited and waited, my was very patient and didn’t really fuss at all. It looked like she enjoyed watching people. We were lucky to stop in the line where there was some shade so it didn’t get super hot. Finally we got to get on the train and Mya wanted to ride up front. 
We got to the first row seats and Mya decided that it was too close to the engine so we moved back to the back of the first car. Still close but not too close as Mya put it. We rode around the track and got to see more flamingos, some zebras, and ducks. The wolves were hiding so we didn’t get to see them. After the train ride the timing was right and we headed to the bird show.
It was almost time for it to start so we hurried on over to the place where it was to take place. We got there as they were explaining the show but no birds were shown yet. All during the show Mya was wanting more birds. She didn’t really know what to think about it but as it went on she enjoyed seeing the birds flying around our heads. One huge bird actually knocked a crowd participant into a small pond, which was not supposed to happen.
We then headed out and back home. One last stop on the way home was at Graeter’s Ice cream with the rest of the family for national ice cream day.
It was a fun day and I loved spending time with Mya. Love you Mya!