Beautiful weather and our First Trip to the Zoo: April 1-April 6

On April Fool's we had a good time playing with Connor and snapping photos. We love this outfit on Connor. The shirt is a "Kentucky" shirt which makes us think of home and the pants are hand me downs from Connor's older cousin who is now 6 years old! We remember babysitting him when he was only 6 months old and we remember he wore these pants.

Here's a few more shots of Connor getting down on the play mat working on his tummy skills.

April 2

April 2

Here's Kim playing with Connor as Connor studies the alligator square of his mat.
April 3

It's always a blast to play with Connor inside, but the first few days of April are memorable for their wonderful weather. It was just absolutely perfect... warm without being hot and cool without being cold. To his students delight Christian takes the opportunity to lead his oral English class outside. (It also meant an escape from the hot and stuffy classrooms).

Christian's class outside on April 1

Here's Connor the same day chilling with some cherry blossoms. You can tell from his bare foot that he's pulled his socks off... again.

April 1

 Superman at the Zoo: April 4

But the "really good weather" experience was a long awaited for trip to the zoo! During the winter, we'd discovered that a park about a couple of blocks from our apartment has a small zoo inside. We'd been waiting for just the right weather to check it out. The trip to the zoo also happened to coincide with the arrival of a Superman outfit we'd bought for Connor. Yes, that's right, a Superman outfit! We found it randomly while browsing the big Chinese shopping website  and were blown away by how cute and inexpensive it was. The site is called taobao. It is like Amazon meets Ebay but all in Chinese.

Anyway, the Superman outfit arrived, the weather was awesome so we dressed him up and headed out!

 

Before we got out of the building, the a yi's stopped us to admire the costume. It has short sleeves and pants and a detachable cape.

In the photo below, Connor impresses us all with his flying skills.

Sadly we don't have red baby socks to complete the costume, but the
yellow doesn't look bad.

Connor says, "What cute outfit? I gotta get this
sock off!"

So we walked to the park and Connor played with his foot.
He pulls his socks off all the time and people constantly let us know this as we walk by. It happened so much that Kim now knows the word for sock in Chinese.

 In fact, a lot of Kim's language learning this year has been in context of the baby. She understands many expressions such as: "How old is he?" "Boy or Girl?" "What fun!" "He has big eyes!" "He has long eyelashes!" "So white!" "Does he eat breast milk or formula?" but she can't repeat them all and can't always answer the questions.

Connor stares at the cherry blossoms.

The park was super beautiful, but also very crowded. We figured everyone else had the same idea to get out  in such excellent weather.

We also soon realized that the park was much bigger than we originally thought. It's not only a lovely area filled with nature, lakes and cement paths to walk around but it also has an amusement park area and a small temple.

The kids on this bungee jumping type ride were seemed to be bouncing so close to trees it was hard to watch.

After about a 15 minute walk through the park, we arrived at the zoo (of course it is opposite the main gate of the park!)

The ticket lady, who we met on our previous visit (when we discovered the zoo), remembered us and gave Connor an apple which he immediately tried to shove into his mouth!

So... we haven't really said anything about the crowds. It was really crowded in the park and more crowded in the zoo because the space is more confined than in the rest of the park.

This normally isn't a problem, but Connor tends to stand out and people sometimes can't control their excitement when seeing a foreign baby.




Below, you'll see one of the side effects of this. Trying to get a photo with Christian and Connor at the lake, a group of young girls stop, giggle and blatantly snap photos of us (without asking). This behavior is annoying on many levels, the least of which is the ruination of our attempt to get a photo with the amazing boat game taking place in the lake. Dealing with other's interest in the baby has been one of the most challenging parts of the year.

Despite the fact that some people treated us like we were one of the exhibits, we had a good time at the zoo. We saw many different animals including a lynx and a Siberian tiger which neither of us had ever seen before! Here are a few highlights of the animal shots we took.

A sleeping Siberian tiger. He was in his tiger house but
there was also a grassy field he could explore.

Peacock!

Somehow an umbrella ended up in the monkey area. The monkeys had a
fun time playing keep away with it.

 We stopped at one point to feed Connor and afterwards, Christian rocked him to sleep.

On the walk home we stopped to rest and Connor discovered grass!

GRASS!

It really was a big day out! But it was worth it because the weather cooled down dramatically the following few days.

Christian hides while Connor explores some leaves.
In his coat again! April 6

April 6th was Connor's 7 month "birthday"! Way to go Connor! Next post... more from April! See you there!

April 5