A Train Ride...

Last week we traveled from our town to the capital, which is a 6 hour train ride. Above is a photo I snapped of Franklin and Ellie from inside the train. Ellie likes to wave at people. I think that's what she was doing in the photo.
Once Franklin and Ellie joined me on the train, Franklin took a photo. Doesn't Ellie look like she's all grown up?
During the train ride, Ellie kept us busy. She slept a little bit, but other than that she wanted to eat, to read books, to play with toys, to talk to other people, to climb on us, or to look out the window as pictured below.

A Trip To The Zoo

Our town has a zoo in it. Because Ellie has been so interested in animals that she sees on the streets (dogs, goats, cows, etc), Franklin decided it was time to introduce Ellie to all the animals at our zoo. Above Ellie meets some friendly donkeys.

The monkeys at our zoo are crazy! They get very excited when people come, because they are often fed peanuts. We were able to toss peanuts to many monkeys who would put their hands out of the cage. Below is a picture of a multi-tasking mommy monkey... she could feed her baby and catch peanuts all at the same time...very impressive.

While we were enjoying tossing peanuts to the monkeys, one of the monkeys that had escaped from the cage snuck up on me and tried to grab the whole packet of peanuts out of my hands.


Among the other animals that we saw were many birds, a couple bears, a lion, a snake, and pictured below is a crocodile. Check out how narrow his nose/snout/mouth is.

The zoo is also a park, so there is lots of space with greenery to walk around. There is also a children's park that has something like a ferris wheel and another kids ride. They look a bit to dodgy for me to put my baby on, though. There was also a little guy with a scale. You could be weighed for less than 5 cents, so we went ahead and had Franklin and Ellie weighed. (Just a note, if you ever come, don't bother being weighed there because it's totally inaccurate... :) ) We thought it was pretty funny, though.


In the end we decided that Ellie is not interested in caged animals, just animals that are free to roam about on the street. Maybe she will be an animal rights activist when she grows up...

Messy foods

It's mango season here, and we have found out that our little Ellie loves mangoes. It was pretty clear before she tried them that unless we were feeding her small pieces with our own hand, it was going to be very messy. So, we took all her clothes off, put her in her tub, and let her have a mango seed. It did indeed turn out to be messy, but boy did we have a happy baby.
Unfortunately, I didn't have the same foresight about letting Ellie feed herself Shuji... something like cream of wheat. Thankfully, though, this wasn't as sticky as the mango, and a quick bath took care of all the shuji... from on her hair, from in her ear, from up her nose, everywhere. :)