Stay At Home Mama for the Day

I found out there's something good about Columbus Day after all. Even though we don't have the day off at my work, I had to take a vacation day to be with Gabriela since daycare was closed. I was so excited to spend the day with my baby.

We woke up bright and early, just like work days. I packed her diaper bag and after a messy breakfast, we got bundled up to go visit the zoo. Gabriela loves riding on the metro. She does her sign for "train" every time we see the metro, and she was just beside herself hearing the train noises and announcements.

As a result of my excitement, we arrived 30 minutes before the zoo officially opened. It was pretty empty so I let Gabriela walk all around. She was happy to see birds and squirrels. Oh boy, was she going to love what was in store for her!

We were only there a few hours, but in that time we managed to see the zebras snuggle, elephants drinking water, a bunch of gorillas, including the sweet little baby girl. The gorillas are usually my favorite, but the lion stole the show on Monday. He kept roaring and roaring and roaring and roaring. Seriously, it must have been feeding time. Gabriela knows the lions roar, so it was really exciting for her to actually hear it happen for real! She started roaring back, and giggling, and when the lion stopped, she did the sign for more. I had to explain that I didn't think the lion knew sign language.

We then trotted over to the farm animal section of the zoo where they have cows, pigs, alpaca, goats and donkeys. Gabriela mooed at the cows and snorted at the pigs. George the Donkey came right up to Gabriela to say hello, and my little baby said ALPACA when I told her we also saw Alpaca at the zoo in Peru when we were there last year. Genius, I tell you.

I took about 4 pictures before I got the error message on my camera that the memory was full. I can't believe I left for our day at the zoo together without the memory card for the camera. This is the second time I've done this! It has to stop!!!!

We hurried home for nap time. As soon as Gabriela was asleep I started some laundry, cleaned up a little, made a Bolognese pasta sauce that needs to cook for hours and hours and since I was already at it, I decided to make chicken stock so we could have soup for dinner the following night.

We stacked blocks and danced and read books and read more books and then we kicked a ball around in the hallway of our apartment floor, which is much more spacious than our actual apartment. We all ate dinner together as soon as Daddy came home. Gabriela went right to sleep, earlier than usual.

I really enjoyed spending that extra time with her. I wish every day could be like that.