The Torgerson Family: A Zoo Outing

Last Friday we took advantage of the nice weather and went to the zoo. This was a pretty big deal since it was my 1st outing with both kids and no Daddy. I can't say I did it all on my own, though. Nana and Honey were in town to help us keep our sanity last week and Nana was along for the zoo adventure. She was a huge help coralling Truitt as needed- and it was always needed. We met up with a very patient Missy and Maddie (we were about 15 minutes late. I am still getting the hang of getting us all out of the house). It's been a while since we've seen them and been to the zoo so we were really looking forward to it...

The boys in their double stroller ready to go. This was pretty much Mathis the whole day...

First stop was giraffes. This is one of Truitt's favorite animals. He and Maddie wasted no time getting out of their strollers and fence climbing. They were so cute. I am amazed and in love with this age- the toddlers are starting to talk to each other and have little conversations. It's so cool to see communication branching out, outside of the family. It's also pretty cool to see Truitt grasp the concept of friends. I love love love it!

Climbing the fence for a better view of the giraffes; the Houston giraffe family, which includes baby Miles

Running where they weren't supposed to go and neither responding or stopping when yelled to by their mother. toddlers are awesome; refocused and seriously cute

Truitt and Nana check out the elephants and, later, the orangutans

After the elephants, Maddie decided she and Truitt should hold hands. He was down with that and it made for a pretty cute scene. It also provided one of the funniest moments of the day when a couple other moms were walking by and one said "Oooooohhhh, look how cute. Those two little girls are holding hands." Yeah, awesome. Ha! We got a good chuckle out of that. The other mother did mention that she thought one might be a boy and then she suggested maybe they were twins...

Not content to just hold hands with Truitt, Maddie decided it would be fun to hold hands with Nana as well. Of course Nana didn't mind. Missy and I certainly didn't mind if everyone held hands either. At least it kept us all together! Maddie was quite fond of Nana in general, askign to be held and sticking by her side.

Maddie was also quite taken with Mathis. Both she and Truitt would check in on him every few exhibits.

But a toddler is a toddler is a toddler and no matter how fun the hand holding was, these two had to make their own way when they could.

One animal we got to see that we usually miss was the pink flamingo. I was glad we went a different route because Truitt has a couple different books with flamingoes and he was very excited to see them in person. I, myself, was a little shocked at how much they stink. Who knew?

By taking a different path, the kids also got to be philanthropic and donate some (additional) money to the zoo via giant peacock. They were just a little to small to do it on their own so Nana ended up retrieving their dropped coins from the bottom of the display and Missy helped them get the money actually in to the brid while I played photographer. This was super fun for Truitt who is currently obsessed with coins and calls them all "money." If he has a nickel and wants another one, he'll tell me "Another money please. I want two monies." Stinking cutie!

There was so much cuteness over the course of the morning and Missy and I both tried to capture it by having both kids look at the camera at the same time. Sure- easier said than done. I hope she had better luck. Here is my lame attempt to get them to both look at me by telling them some Mommy-type lie like "Diego is in my camera."