Zoo

I finally got my Seattle zoo membership today. I waited so long because there seemed to be plenty of playgrounds and community center places to take Jonah during the day, but today I just ran out of ideas of places to take the boy. So, we went to the zoo. It turned out to be a pretty nice day for Seattle. The sun peaked out here and there, but of course there were bits of drizzle mixed in with that too. 

Zoomazium is an indoors, zoo-themed playground within the zoo. It's the place to go when it is cold and rainy. It's even highlighted on the zoo-map as a "rainy day activity." There are about twelve exhibits on the map that have the little umbrella symbol indicating a rainy day activity. In all the other cities I've lived, you just don't go to the zoo on a rainy day; not the case here. Zoomazium turned out to be a pretty nice place to take Jonah. There was a storytime, of which he showed no interest, but good to know it's there. There are also a couple of big slides, a toddler area, puppets, stuffed animals, building block area, craft area, and lots of little animal artifacts to look at and feel.

Jonah's favorite place was the toddler area that had animal puppets and stuffed animals. He really wanted to play with the giant stuffed beaver, but there was an annoying child and an even more annoying mother that would not let Jonah play with it. The little girl, who was about Jonah's age, was playing with the beaver for a very long time. Jonah politely asked to play with the beaver; a toddler does this by going up to the girl, gently tugging on the toy, letting go, and then waiting to see if the girl will give it up. This little girl did not give up the toy. That is not too unusual (from what I've seen only about 2 in 5 kids will immediately give up the toy). But what was unusual was that the spoiled little girl's mother told Jonah, "she was playing with that!" The normal parental response to that situation is to say, "can you share with the little boy?" Or, the parent might not say anything at all and just let the kids work things out themselves, which does often work. I was really a bit shocked at the mother. She was the hovering-type and she also was pretty clueless about animals. She kept calling the beaver a "squirrel." I don't even like zoos and I know the difference between a beaver and a squirrel. I told Jonah that we didn't need to play with that beaver today and we found some other animals to play with. 

Jonah next to a toddler-sized bird's next 

I'm not exactly sure what this is supposed to be. Perhaps a hollowed out tree stump.