Animal Adventures

Our pass to Lowry Park Zoo expired last month, so we have been finding other fun animal adventures to experience with the girls. 

We visited Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in Palm Harbor, FL  a couple weeks ago.  It is a small facility with a wide variety of rescued primates.  They also have some rescued birds, turtles, goats and a couple lemurs.  The girls love monkeys, so they had a good time.  Melia loved tossing treats to the monkeys.  A couple of the monkeys got a little loud and scared Makena, but overall the had a good time.

Last weekend we took a drive up to Bushnell, FL and visited the Florida International Teaching Zoo.  The "zoo" is home to a wide variety of animals.  There was a great little educational program after our tour.  Neither of the girls have any fear of animals, which can be good, but also scares me when they try to reach out and pet everything!  Melia's favorite part was the baby monkeys.  She thought it was cute that the baby monkey was nursing. :)

I love that the girls enjoy learning about different animals.  And I love that we have had so many opportunities to take them on exciting animal adventures.  Looking forward to our next outing!

Bye Bye Binky

Chris has been trying to get Makena to wean from the binky for a while.  I haven't been in the same rush, but I have been limiting when she has it (or at least trying to limit!).  I even saved a great article of fun ways to say "bye bye" to the binky forever. 

Makena is starting to be more vocal.  She actually says a lot of words, sometimes from behind the binky.  One of my favorite lines of Melia's is "take her binky out and her mouth will work"!  Totally true!

Last night Chris put Makena to bed without a binky.  She fussed a few minutes then went to bed.  Tonight, was round 2 and we had the same results.  I don't want to curse anything, but I think we are moving in the right direction!

Adventures in Potty Training

So it seems that Makena may be ready for potty training.  It kind of happened overnight.  All of a sudden, she is pulling at her diaper as soon as she wets and getting fussy as soon as she has a BM.  She is interested in the toilet, wants to flush and loves to sit on the seat. And the best part (hint of sarcasm), is they way she now plays with the contents of her dirty diaper.  School calls it "sensory play", Molly calls it a snack and Melia calls it "yucky".  Yep, I am not loving that part.  So let the potty training begin!