That right there is the face of a baby who is overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the Wild Animal Park. I had the best time just watching her take it all in... until she passed out in the stroller about five minutes after that picture. I think she may have seen an elephant or two, but then it was lights out from that point on. I had to wake her up to feed her, but then she went right back to sleep. I think the three of us--Marc, Livia, and I--all got a total of about five hours of broken sleep last night. She is still dealing with some stomach troubles, and last night she just could not get comfortable. Since she was so tired today, I just let her sleep as much as she wanted. Next time I will put her in the carrier and read all the signs to her and talk about all the animals like I used to do with Roman, and have everyone look at me like I am a crazy person.
But while Livia slept, Roman ran and ran and pushed the stroller with me and then ran some more. We have absolutely been cooped up in the house for the last few weeks because of the ridiculous heat, so I was more than happy to let Roman get a little rambunctious at the park today. He needed to be able to get crazy, and that is what he did. Roman has this cute little habit of yelling, "Run!" and then waiting for me to tell him whether or not he can run away (well, most of the time he waits to see if it's okay), and he did this numerous times while we were wandering around. The park was really empty, so I didn't mind chasing him down with the stroller, but I probably should not to teach him that it's fine to just run away from me in a public place, especially when I have Liv in the stroller. We really only stopped to look at the elephants, and I am glad we did because they got really close to the fence. I don't think Rome has ever been that close to them. The elephants were standing near the pond getting some water, and I was explaining to him that their trunks were like big straws that brought the water to the elephants' mouths. Roman got a kick out of this, and when we passed by the little elephant statue, he ran over and pointed to one of the trunks and started making a slurping sound. Yep, bud, that is exactly what the elephants were doing. I guess we did also stop at the overlook to see the giraffes, but that was only so I could feed Liv, and Roman ran around the little grassy enclosure the entire time I was feeding her. Then we were off wandering again, and as we got near the splash area near the lions I could hear Roman getting really excited, and there was no way that he was going to let us just pass it by. I didn't have a change of clothes for him, but I figured what the heck, we'll just go home after this. I am glad that the splash area was at the end of our walk because Rome was absolutely soaked from head to toe once he was done. I think the WAP updated that area because I remember there only being the three kind of lame animal fountains before, but this time there were sprinklers all over, including up in the palm trees, and they turned on at different intervals, so you were never quite sure when you were about to get hit in the face with water. At first, Romey was a little upset about this, but then he found the surprise shot to the face really funny. He especially liked standing right in front of the alligator fountain so that the front of his shorts were sprayed by the stream of water... is this a little boy thing? To think that it is really funny to have your junk sprayed with water? I am going to go ahead and say yes to that because Roman also thinks it's really funny to stand and squat directly over a sprinkler if it's on. Oh, boys. When he (finally) decided that he had had enough, we headed home. It was such a lovely day; it was one of those days that I really, really wished Marc could have come out with us, but hopefully now that tourist season is drawing to a close we will be much better about heading out on the weekends.
