Maryland Zoo

I am a huge Zoo lover. We were very lucky and the zoo was 7 minutes from our apartment! Brooklyn and I got a zoo pass so we could go whenever we wanted. It turned out to be way nice because Brooklyn absolutely loved going and it's a big zoo so I got some exercise in pushing her around. I loved this zoo. It is so pretty and the "cages" for the animals are so nice. They offer so much there. Brooklyn and I rode a camel and also fed a giraffe. She talked about those all summer! If you ask her now she still gets excited and will tell you all about it.

Anyway here are pictures from all of our trips to the zoo......

Ready to go to the zoo.

It is gorgeous.

I love the walkways.

She was amazed by the 'big birds' (vultures)

Looking at the Chimp.

We have a story about this Chimp! I'll tell you at the end.

Looking at the baby Chimps.

There was a huge aquarium with tons of fish and blue turtles. It was awesome. There was also a little alligator. The next time we went the aquarium was so empty. I'm thinking something ate all the fish :(

Daddy came with us one day.

Feeding time.

Brooklyn looks disgusted. But it was pretty weird how they stuff the fish down the penguins throats.

Standing like the ducks :)

Little Cowgirl

We fed the giraffe a couple times. This is probably her favorite thing she's ever done.

Jimmy and Hunter came one day.

Brooklyn loved watching the baby elephant play in the water.

So story time....

Brooklyn one day started acting so weird. She would sit with me on the couch and didn't want to get down or play. If she needed something she would run super fast grab a toy and run back. She did that for a couple days. When we'd go out she'd only want to be by me. After like a week I was telling Bry I have no idea what could be going on. Brooklyn asked for something so Bryant tried to get her to go get it herself. He tried to put her on the ground but she'd bend her legs so she wouldn't touch the carpet. Then one day she woke up from her nap terrified saying "Gorilla" I'm not clear on all the details now but basically we found out that she is scared of some imaginary gorilla. She one day pointed in the hall closet and told us the Gorilla was in there. So we have this imaginary gorilla living in our closet. We tried telling her no there's no gorilla. Gorilla isn't real blah blah blah but nothing worked. It got so bad that she was having bad dreams and waking up so scared. I remembered a story of how my dad killed my older brothers imaginary friend. We didn't want to kill the gorilla. We thought that might be too traumatic for Brooklyn. So instead Bryant got a garbage bag and said the gorilla was in it and he was going to throw him away. Yay we're geniuses :) nope that didn't work. One day she was drinking a caprisun and she went and held it straight out in front of her to the open closet door and said "Here Gorilla want some?" He cute little hand was shaking. :) We were laughing so hard. It was so cute, although sad. So we came up with another plan. Bryant wrestled inside the closet with an empty box while Brooklyn and I listened. He then put it in the garbage bag and showed Brookies. We all went to the dumpster out back and watched daddy throw him away. Brooklyn started yelling "Yay Daddy you did it!!" Then she'd tell people how daddy threw Gorilla away and we no longer had an imaginary gorilla.

Bry and I laugh about it, but it really was sad how scared Brooklyn was. We had no idea a they could imagine these things that young.

Oh so the reason I say I had a story about that chimp is because after listening to Brooklyn talk about 'the gorilla' I realized it was the big Chimp from the zoo. One day she was standing on the ledge of the Chimp window watching them and the big male chimp crossed right in front of her and it startled her. And it's like he knew and so he walked back past and turned right in front of her and started banging on the glass. She FREAKED OUT! I couldn't calm her down for a bit. She was crying saying she needed daddy :( A zookeeper was buy us and she said sorry he's just mean. He does stuff like that all the time. The last time we were there with Bryant that chimp climbed up above the glass to a chain link fence and spit on a women. So anyway after that scary chimp experience is when the Gorilla appeared in our apartment.