Safari Monkey

MM had his first visit to the Safari Park today. What a blast! Literally lions, tiger and bears, oh my! We had a great time looking at the elephants (eppellunts, he calls them) and giraffe and an amazing time driving through the animal enclosures. We had a very up-close-and-personal encounter with a large white rhino who was barely 20 feet from the car as we started to make our exit (as fast as possible!) you would seriously not want to have that run into you! Driving past lions a few feet away was amazing and slightly less scary as they were all asleep :)  Into the bison and camel area and the bison were charging around which is also fairly terrifying to drive towards! They were literally inches from the car as we drove out, absolutely incredible. To keep the adrenaline going we took in the Birds of Prey flying demo. Hmmm MM was a bit too excitable so was removed by Grandma, all too happily as there was a slim chance of a huge turkey vulture landing on our heads. HA HA. Chris and I braved it out but there was definitely a bit of ducking going on as a falcon flew straight at us and over 80 mph. To round off a fab afternoon we finished up with the sea lion show. It was just fantastic and MM was screaming in delight and clapping along with Lola the sea lion. He's just such a little animal lover and his excitement at the sea lion show was so infectious and lovely. What a great day out, we managed to take in the brown bear, tiger, Clydesdale horse, meerkats, penguins and otters too and STILL have more to see the next time we go!

Things Molly's Monkey loves to eat

MM may be the most adventurous and fruit-friendly two year old there is.

Since he was barely a year old he's loved olives and these days he'll eat 12 anchovy stuffed olives in one go no problem.

MM loves:

nectarines/peaches
apples
plums
strawberries
raspberries
blackberries
blueberries
oranges
kiwi
mango
grapes
raisins
dried cranberries
banana smoothies
any type of fruit bar esp. Humzingers
all fruit in jelly (pineapple/mandarins...)
sun-dried tomatoes
olives
cheese
yoghurt
milk (that he drinks by the gallon it seems!)
and on and on...

He's been known to put away toasted, buttered German rye bread for breakfast (that I call cake) and demolished pakora, samosa and onion bhaji for lunches. He loves my chorizo paella, mushroom risotto, tuna melts, cheese croissants, pesto spaghetti and Grandma's pasta bolognese to name a few. I'm so lucky he's such a wonderful eater.

Life wouldn't be complete without treats too though and he loves his ice-cream, fish fingers, the odd chocolate, biscuits, a slice of pizza, potato waffles and of course chips but the highlight for MM is always his ketchup! Go figure.

Of the very very few things he doesn't really like I can only think of: potatoes, melon and bizarrely sponge cake that he almost always refuses :)

On repeat

When MM is too big for cuddles I really want to remember these days where all he says is "Mummy mummy mummy", "Huggy Mummy huggy" and "Pleasie Mummy please please please" to get me to my feet. He's so funny, if wails of "Mummy!" don't work he jumps on top of me shrieking "Huggy Mummy", especially if I'm reading and not paying attention to him and if that STILL doesn't work it's "Pleasie Mummy pleasie pleasie" until I give in...and I do!

Just now he's fed up of me being on the computer, which is fair enough really, so he's just launched onto my lap yelling 'catch you Mummy' and I'm smothered in cuddles. There's nothing better than this.

Little TV addict

MM is absolutely crazy about Thomas the Tank Engine just now. I blame myself after the excitement of Thomasland.

Still, he can differentiate between all these different engines on screen or in books now so he must be learning something at the same time: Thomas, Gordon, James, Henry, Percy, Toby, Emily and Spencer as well as trying to say 'troller' for the Fat Controller and to my amusement "trouble" since the narrator always seems to say "then there was trouble!"

I've really noticed a big difference in his words now, they're coming thick and fast and he's repeating back a lot of what I say to him now. I find it fascinating as he learns and remembers little things. He's almost gotten the cast of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse down now too: Mickey! Goofy! Daisy, Pete, Pluto and trying to say Clarabelle :)

His favourites are Thomas the Tank Engine, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Handy Manny, Special Agent Oso, Mr Moon, Franny's Feet, Little Einsteins, Bob the Builder and the film The Lion King. I could probably recite his Thomas movie and The Lion King backwards in my sleep.

He's still crazy about animals recognising and saying elephant (eppa), giraffe (raff), tiger, lion (he usually calls it a lion-tiger), meerkat, bird, flamingo (mingo), dog, cat, snake, bee, snail, sheep, pig, horse, monkey, duck, chicken, cow, shark, fish, dinosaur (dino/dono), owl, bear, mouse, frog, seal, penguin and dragon - all with sounds too :)

I'm always trying to get him to read or sit for a story more but he's so active it's hard to get him to sit still. I can't believe how much he takes in from the TV though - Playhouse Disney is a great channel, no ads and back to back programmes that he's learning from. He's daft about rockets too thanks to Little Einsteins and I find he tries to make a rocket ("whoosh!") out of everything from his juice bottle to a crayon. Fun times :)

Where did the summer go?

Two days of sun and it's been another blink-and-miss-it Summer!

Still, we had a lovely time visiting some of England's finest toddler attractions - Legoland Discovery Centre, Manchester (with some Trafford Centre shopping goodness for Mummy!), Thomasland at Drayton Manor Theme Park, Chester Zoo, Twycross Zoo and Bristol Zoo Gardens. Not bad in under a week.

Twycross Zoo was spectacular! It's a World Primate Centre so needless to say MM was in monkey-heaven. From the loudest gibbons I've ever heard (maybe the only gibbons I've ever heard actually) to the amazing gorillas it was a fantastic day out. For me the highlight was watching the herd of elephants swimming in their pool as the rain started. Just wonderful.

A first pass at posting

So I've been meaning to write some form of blog about/for/inspired by my little monkey and finally, only two years down the line, I've managed to do it! I just want to try to record and remember as much as possible about these wonderful, hectic, going-by-too-fast early years.

Molly's Monkey (MM) as we'll call him, absolutely loves monkeys. And elephants. And tigers. All animals in fact. He's getting pretty good at doing lots of different animals noises:

monkey goes ooh ooh
tiger goes roaaaar
birdie goes cheep cheep
bee goes bzzzzz
sheep goes baaa
...and so on!

MM also loves to eat. Anything. Everything. Especially anything of mine. True to monkey form today he's put away a two banana smoothie (he can't see a banana without shouting nana-monkey or monkey tree) and then stole almost all of my pesto spaghetti. Ah well.

We're going to two big zoos next week, one is a World Primate Centre and both have elephants and giraffes so MM is likely to go into orbit when he sees them (me too if I'm honest).