The National Zoo

Thursday, October 5
Because of some schedules we were trying to work around, I ventured to the National Zoo by myself with the four kids. (We ended up renting a minivan for my last two weeks at my parents' house so that I could actually go places without having to take two drivers and two cars...) So, on Thursday I drove by myself through D.C. to the zoo for the first time. (I am proud to say that I didn't get lost at all either going to the zoo or returning to my parents' house.)
The kids had a lot of fun and it ended up being perfect weather. I was a little concerned the night before because they were forecasting showers off and on throughout the day. We took a picnic lunch and spent almost 5 hours there. The highlights for us were the elephant demonstration that we saw and the Giant Pandas (they have a baby panda that is about 15 months old).





This is the baby panda, Tai Shan. Apparently he loves to climb trees. We went to the Giant Panda exhibit first when we got to the zoo and the baby panda and the mother were not out in the exhibit. There was a zoo worker there that was telling everyone that they were trying to get Tai Shan to come down from a tree in the new exhibit which was just finished so that they could bring him back over to the old exhibit for people to see. We were told to return to the panda exhibit a little later to try and see them again.

When we came back later, Tai Shan was playing up in this tree, then he just fell asleep up there. He was pretty high up in the tree and appeared to be in a fairly precarious position - but I guess he was comfortable enough to fall asleep...


The panda in this picture is Tian Tian, Tai Shan's dad. The new panda exhibit opened this week...