New Bikes

After Avery learned how to ride her tricycle, daddy thought it was time to upgrade the girls to big girl bikes with training wheels.  He went out and picked out two Barbie bikes; they must have been the best ones seeing as how the girls are not into Barbie yet.  The girls were so excited when they saw their bikes.  Avery picked hers first and immediately noticed the bell.  The other bike didn't have a bell, I don't know why, but of course as soon as Emily saw it she asked, "Where's my bell?".  So mommy had to go out and buy her a bell for her new bike, which she was really happy about.  After she got her bell and we went out for our first ride, Emily noticed her bike had training wheels.  She told Brian, "Look daddy, my bike has stabilizer."  Not knowing what stabilizers were Brian looked at me with a confused looking face.  Stabilizers, I told him, are what the British people call training wheels.  Emily learned from an episode of Peppa Pig about stabilizers.  She wanted to take her stabilizers off as well because in the episode Peppa Pig took her stabilizers off and she was finally able to beat her friends down the hill.  We has to explain to Emily that she needed to learn how to ride with her training wheel before we take them off.

It took a little while for the girls to get used to their new bikes.  After riding for a while Emily was tired and wanted to walk home.  I made her realize that when she rides her bike and she gets tired she has to walk her bike back to the garage.  Mom is sure not going to be walking or carrying bikes home in the middle of rides. After trying her new bike out Avery reverted back to her good old tricycle.  I think daddy needs to adjust her bike because her feet barely touch the pedals.

Avery Learns How to Ride Her Trike

Avery has never wanted to learn how to ride her tricycle.  She has only been on it once and she asked me to push her the whole time she was on it.  So I was surprised when Avery all of a sudden wanted to get on the tricycle and I was even more surprised at how fast she learned how to not only ride it but steer it as well.   I could not have been more proud of my baby!!  Avery didn't want to stop riding so I had daddy stay with her while I went in and fixed dinner.  When she came back inside she said, "Mommy, I did it!  I rode up the hill."  The "hill" is actually a slight elevation on our sidewalk, but she was so proud to conquer it all by herself.

Trip to the San Antonio Zoo

We made our first trip to the San Antonio Zoo but it almost didn't happen.  The first weekend we set our date a big storm rolled in and we cancelled.  This past weekend as we were headed out Avery got a stomach bug and we almost cancelled for the second time.  After some medication Avery seemed fine so we decided to go after all.  Nonna and Alyssa joined us and thanks to Mimi we all got to ride together when she lent us her Tahoe.  We arrived at the zoo on a gorgeous May day.  The weather was perfect after a small cold front had moved through earlier during the week.  So perfect in fact that lots of other people had the same idea we had and went to the zoo and parks nearby.  It was difficult finding parking at first but thank God for Mimi's handicap parking sign.  It was used as a last resort.  Andrea met us at the zoo train depot and we started our adventure.

We started by watching beautiful ducks swim in a duck pond with large goldfish.  Then we moved on to the flamingo exhibit.  Avery loved them but Emily wasn't impressed and wouldn't get out of her stroller to get a better look.

After the flamingos we headed over to see the bears.  Emily liked the bears and thought it was funny they were lazy.  This is the American Black Bear, although when I asked Emily was color the bear was she said he was brown.  Close enough for me.

Next we went to see the Komodo dragon and the reptile exhibit.  Avery absolutely loved seeing all the snakes and of course she especially loved the crocodile.  It's her favorite reptile.  Emily as usual wasn't interested in this exhibit and kept saying she wanted to see the elephant.

This next animal is called an Okapi and is according to the San Antonio Zoo, "The secret of Africa".  I had never heard of such an animal yet as soon as Emily saw it she knew what it was because of the show "Go, Diego, Go".  The Okapi was one of the animals featured on an episode and Emily has such a great memory she remembered Diego's adventure with Okapi.  I was so proud of her, but of course after her interest wore off all she could think about was the elephant she hadn't seen yet.

We finally made it to the elephant exhibition where we found Lucky the elephant.  Emily was so excited she finally got out of her stroller to take a closer look.  She was amazed at how big Lucky the elephant is and how much dirt he had on himself.  Emily was so happy at finally seeing her elephant that she even played a little game of peek-a-boo with Andrea.  If you are wondering what we are looking at in one of the pictures, there was a little squirrel that was playing around at the bottom of pit.

Next up, the beautiful zebras.  I myself was excited to see them and so were both girls.  After growing up reading about all of these creatures I was so happy both girls got to see them in person.  After going through half the zoo I understood that Emily loved all the big animals and hated the small ones.  One reason why we don't have pictures of monkeys is because Emily flipped out when we saw them.  They were swinging from buckets in their cages and Emily didn't want to go near them and started crying.  I got her to calm down only after I told her they were baby monkeys.  Then she said, "They are not going to get out mommy?"  She was so scared the monkeys were going to come out of their cages.  I guess we will never go to a petting zoo.

After an hour of being at the zoo watching all the animals, the girls were getting a little tired.  We still trudged on and saw the huge rhinoceros.  Avery tripped on the pavement and cried a little but it wasn't anything that a couple of gummy snack packs couldn't fix.

The last leg of our tour included the gorgeous cheetah, the beautiful gazelles and the kangaroos all who did nothing but lounge around on this lazy day.  We did see one kangaroo bounce around which was amazing.  The biggest disappointment to us all was that there was no lion or tiger to be found, I think they were in their caves, and the zoo didn't have a giraffe.

Of course we couldn't leave the zoo without souvenirs and both girls were excited to one each.  Emily, of course, got a stuffed elephant and Avery was delighted to get a giraffe.  Then we let them climb around the lion statues which Emily thought looked like Simba and his family from The Lion King.  Overall we had a great trip and the girls had a wonderful time.