Elizabeth's First Birthday!! Part I

Our baby turned one this month - April 15. I cannot believe a year has gone by so fast - it is so cliche, but I guess cliches are cliches for a reason.

Elizabeth on Day One

Elizabeth on her First Birthday!

 We were so lucky that Larry & Gina (Matthew's Dad and Step-Mom) came to England to visit us for Elizabeth's birthday week. They spent a week with us in Cambridge, with a couple of day-trips to London, including a very exciting trip to the London Zoo for E's first birthday.

She LOVED it. The first thing we saw were the monkeys & gorillas - huge hit with her. She was Captain McPointy and giggled and laughed and screamed at them. At one point we were standing by this mesh fence, and there was a baby monkey just on the other side of the foliage in E's line of sight.

It was love at first sight, until some big kid shook the foliage and then the Mummy Monkey JUMPED onto the fence and did scary-monkey-screamy-face. That scared away the big kid, and also made Elizabeth cry. Mums can be scary in all species.

Then we saw this statue, and hello, could not resist:

Here are a few more shots of the zoo times (mostly of Larry & Gina & Elizabeth - I took very few pictures of animals, but I hope all of you know what zebras & giraffes & lions look like . . . )

Okay, so not "at" the zoo, but just hanging out on the tube on the way. Such an urban baby!

We kept trying to teach her to say "Grandpa" and it sounds like "Ga-pa!!" She is saying lots of words now, including Button, and Bubble . . . those two sound almost identical . . . I guess we should probably teach her words that start with different sounds . . .

Looking for the wild African dogs - they say "oof oof!"

Woot woot! First birthday at the zoo!!

I have to make a confession, that even though this zoo has lions, giraffes, okapis, penguins, peacocks, pigs, hippos etc etc etc, my daughter's favourite animal was the pigeon that she chased at lunch time. Hmmm...