A brave adventure at the Singapore zoo!

Well, since Dr. Irene said she thought baby will be "a while" in coming, we decided to give up sitting around waiting for nothing to happen and make a big adventure to the Singapore Zoo!

Folks, I have to tell you, the Singapore zoo is AMAZING!  It's big and their animals are lively and many are free ranging ....meaning they are not behind fences or nets or glass walls.  At our big zoo in Oregon, I remember the poor elephants.  Of the half dozen times I visited, I never saw any of them out in their yard.  They were always in their covered area, standing on a sad concrete floor looking....blank.  Here the elephants are kept very busy working.  They have baths and do shows and work and give rides and get yummy snacks several times a day, and it seems like they love it.

Our first stop was the Sea Lion "Splash show."  I gave Dave a bad time for being so excited about getting to see a Pacific Northwest sea lion.  We got there good and early for our front seats.  While waiting for the show to start, Jonathan played in the water splashing out of the tank and  made a new friend, Scarlett, who is from England.  (You can just barely see her behind Jonathan in the picture.)  They both were soaking wet within 2 minutes and had a great time squealing and splashing and copying each other.  As for our front seats, we quickly vacated them after the first big splash from the sea lion.

So here are Jonathan and Dave watching the elephant show, which was our second stop.  This morning I asked Jonathan what he saw at the zoo, and after a while he answered "elephant draw picture!"  This is what he remembered the most of the whole day.... Before the show, one elephant was out in the yard "finger painting" with her trunk.   Artistic expression for elephants!

An example of elephant art I pulled off of the web

More of the elephant show ....two elephants working as a team!

While we were waiting around, Jonathan quickly found a "digger" in the gift shop.  "Drive digger, drive digger, drive digger!"

Soon little Phillip came along and since there were 2 steering wheels Jonathan was happy to share his digger.  Dave visited with the little Russian boy's parents, Igor and Olga.  Having kids is such a wonderful way to meet people, and I wished that Jonathan could have more playtime with both Scarlett and Philip.  I also wished that we could hang out with their parents more!

We made it in time to the giraffe feeding.  When asked, Jonathan said he did want to feed the giraffe, but he got a little worried when that big blue tongue came reaching out at eye level! 

Here, he's a little braver!  This morning, he also recalled giving the giraffe a "snack" and was excited to see the pictures. 

Here are Dave and Jonathan at the white rhino exibit.  There were 5 rhinos.  I just couldn't get them in the same picture.  They were kind of dirty and ugly.

So, it was a very fun day, and I walked the whole day all around the zoo and did not go into labor, despite some moments of discomfort.  Jonathan did NOT fall alseep in his stroller as we had planned.  We left the zoo at about 5 pm and decided to try coming home on public transport -- bus-subway-bus.  (In the morning, we traveled by taxi for $28 SGD = 20 minutes.  Cost by public transport is about $4 = 2 hours.)  Jonathan did fall asleep at the train station and all was fine until he woke up in an extremely crowded subway car about 30 minutes later.  It was the worst meltdown EVER ....almost wiped out all of our happy memories of the day.  Fortunately, we have pictures of the happy day at the zoo and none of the meltdown so I think I know what we will remember in the end.   We're very thankful to have had one last family outing, just the three of us, before baby brother's arrival!