Yesterday we took our first family trip in DC to visit the National Zoo. This was also meant as part of Mason's birthday from us since we aren't throwing him a big party like last year. He has been very into animals lately and loves to tell us the sounds they make so we thought it would be a perfect time for his first trip to the zoo. We've been planning this trip for a couple weeks now and as the day approached the weather reports were looking more and more grim for the day. They predicted rain showers for majority of the day, so we were debating if we should hold off and go another day. However, we have few days together in the coming weeks and I knew the longer we waited the bigger and more uncomfortable I'd be going. So we decided to take our chances and go anyways!
The National Zoo is close to downtown DC and has very little, not to mention pricy parking so we opted to park for free and take the metro down. This was Mason's first time riding the metro, or any kind of train before and he wasn't to sure about it to begin with as you can see by the terrified look on his face.
The fruit snacks in his hand helped a little and eventually he got used to the train going and stopping. He seemed to like it better when we were traveling outside vs in the tunnels.
The Metro station is about a 1/2 mile away from the zoo. but it wasn't to bad of a walk other than the fact that in my excitement to get to the zoo I'd forget I was 32 weeks pregnant and start speed walking only for my stomach to remind me by cramping up. Therefore, by the time we got to the zoo I realized I needed to take it a little slower or I'd never make it through the zoo.
One of our first stops at the zoo was to see an endangered horse, but only his head was sticking out of his barn so Mason couldn't really see him. And as you can see it was raining from the beginning, but not hard, just enough to get us wet and be annoying.
To escape the rain for a little bit we went into the small mammals enclosure where Mason saw meerkats for the first time. He seemed to love them, probably because they were so active.
Watching the meerkats.
Me trying to point out where the animals are to Mason.
Steven trying to get Mason to touch the stone gorillas. He didn't really want a whole lot to do with them, I think he was a little scared of them.
Then we got to go see the real gorillas & chimpanzees, which are always my favorite animals to see.
This big silverback gorilla was pretty active and fun to watch.
He grabbed his branch and came and sat right up against the glass next to where Steven and Mason were.
Next we saw the orangutans, which were also pretty funny to watch. They all had their own white sheets and they liked to pull them over themselves and hide. You could only see the hand of this guy sticking out from under his sheet.
It's kind of blurry, but I caught a pic of this guy right before he covered up with his sheet.
The one below was the only one who didn't seem to be bothered by everybody looking at him and he was content to just sit by the wall and snack.
After we visited the ape exhibit which was indoors we came out to find it raining a little bit harder and decided that we better hurry to our last couple stops before it got any worse. So we hurried over to the big cat exhibits. The tiger was lying down in his cave, and not really noteworthy, but the lions were being pretty active despite the rain.
Steven had to pull Mason out of the stroller so that he could see the lions. Unfortunately after that he didn't want to get back in his stroller and was throwing a fit, but it was raining pretty good by then so we were really trying to hurry.
As we left the lions we had pretty much decided that we were going to head home, but as we started to head out of the zoo we saw an indoor eatery place and realized it was after 1 and we never did stop for lunch. So we went in to eat and by the time we came out the rain had slowed down again and the kids farm exhibit was right by us so we thought we'd hurry and see those animals before heading out.
Mason really liked the cow, and kept saying "mooo".
Mason looking very tired by this point, but watching the llamas.
and then saying "bye bye" to them. This is something he did at almost every exhibit as we would leave each animal he would wave and say "bye bye" to them. It was so cute.
The walk out of the zoo was all uphill, and very long. Needless to say we were a little miserable at that point having been walking around in the rain all day. The 1/2 mile walk back to the metro also seemed to take us forever, and we were so grateful to finally sit down once we got there. I fully expected that Mason would fall asleep at some point during the day, but he fought it all day long. He finally gave in and fell asleep while we were on the metro about 5 minutes before we got off. I thought he'd go back to sleep on our drive home, but he never did. Instead he just looked totally zoned out as evidenced in the picture below!
When we got home it was about 3:30 and we laid Mason down for a much needed nap. We then had to wake him up around 6:30 so that he'd sleep through the night. That didn't end up being a problem though, because he went down at 8 and slept in till 9:30 this morning! I think that's the first time he's ever slept in that long. We must have really worn him out!
It was definitely a long day, but it was fun to take him and see his excitement as he saw all the animals.
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