Daci is 18 months, which means....Zoo Day!

Daci turned 18 months today! We decided to go downtown and see the Lincoln Park Zoo. It is a free zoo right in the middle of Chicago that we had heard was pretty great. We woke up, packed everything in the car, and headed to the city. About 20 minutes into the drive I realized we didn't have the stroller in the trunk, so we had to turn around! We finally made it downtown and right in front of the Zoo is a gorgeous conservatory, I saw it last weekend when we went to the Airshow and I decided I wanted to do Daci's 18 month photo shoot there. We stopped there before the zoo, snapped a few pics and then were on our way.







I was really excited for Daci to see the Polar Bear. She has been really into her "Beers" lately (as you can tell in the photo above, she won't go anywhere without this "beer")

She was really interested in the polar bear, until......

we decided to pull her out of her stroller and take a pic of her with the bear behind her. It completely freaked her out to have this thing swimming straight at her and she couldn't see what was going to happen. For the rest of the day, anytime we tried to pull her out and turn her away from the animals she was afraid they were going to attack her or something.

Looking at the giraffes

Another "beer"

This was the best shot we got of her turned around all day....see that concerned look on her face?

Watching the Ostriches. She loved those.

Another terrified shot of her by all the fish in the African Exhibit.

This bird freaked me out more than anything. Its just this beautiful stork thingy but then I found out it was a bird of prey and it was in this high tech enclosure with the vultures. They actually eat animals and stuff! I don't know why it freaked me out so bad to see this pretty bird and then imagine it being a carnivore. Wierd!

The tiger was by far the most incredible animal we saw. We saw lions and bears and gorillas but most of them just sat around or slept. The tiger actually came out and ran around and did a few poses. It was beautiful!


This monkey was hilarious. He loved being the center of attention and kept swinging from branch to branch and then came up to the window and did a few poses. He had a huge group of people around him because he was so entertaining.


This monkey wins the "gross award". Yes people, that is his poop that he smeared against the glass and then ate with his fingers. Rick was absolutely disgusted...I thought it was pretty funny :)

Can't remember what this is called but the antlers were huge. I can't believe he could hold his head up!

A shot of the city behind us.

We had a great day. We were only at the zoo for 2 hours but we felt like we had spent the whole day there. It was exhausting! Happy 1 1/2 year old Daci!