This week marked Puff’s first trip to the zoo, and a few other things: notably, Dad looking after him for his whole evening routine so that Mum could spend time catching up with some old work friends.
It was a good chance for Dad to prove his skills at looking after Puff. Everything went fairly smoothly, with a minor bath-time hiccup (let’s just say there were cleaning products involved).
Saturday was the trip to the zoo, with uncle J and C. Up and about at a reasonable time, we were worried that he would run out of energy before we even made it to the zoo: he was pretty energetic in the car!
By bad planning, we left the cameras at home, but this actually meant that we were better able to focus on the zoo itself, and on Puff’s reaction to what he was seeing. At least C had brought a camera, though the battery gave up before the end of the day, so we were back to the mobile phone cameras!
The first animals at the zoo that captured Puff’s attention was the elephants: he was happily watching them for much longer than previous animals: perhaps it was their size, or the way they moved around.
There was an opportunity to grab a photo through this photo board that was hard to pass up!
His favourite thing of all at the zoo was not the ducks, the lion, the tigers, but the fish: there was a place where he could stand on a seat, put his hands on the glass to prop himself up, and watch the fish swim straight past him: when we finally took him away from there, he needed some serious distracting to regain his composure!
After about four hours of moving around the zoo, in and out of the stroller, we put the angle of the stroller seat back, and he went straight to sleep. This meant that we could go through the nocturnal section without having to lift him out of his stroller: here’s a shot of him under the UV lights of the nocturnal section.
Despite all the adventures of the day (and not much sleep), he was still in good spirits when we arrived home, though we went straight to his evening routine and getting him ready for bed.
His vocabulary continues to expand at an alarming rate: he’s started to know some of the words in his alphabet book, and knows a few more words from the mealtime “grace” that we’ve been running through. The vocabulary is a big help towards working out what he’s asking for.
Lastly, here’s what I thought was a camera hidden from him, taking some footage of him stacking blocks: