Our Baby of LoveBlogging about our little Darius

(continued from here)

After realising Darius had fallen asleep, Catherine and I pondered on what to do next. At that moment, we saw that the feeding time for the polar bear was 1:05pm, five minutes from our current time. As such, we decided to drop by to take a look.

The host introduced the mother and son polar bears while food was thrown inside the pool for the son Inuka to consume while swimming about for all to see. They even served him his favourite fruit, the watermelon while he savoured it as we watched. Quite a cute sight to see. ^^

Inuka was born in the Singapore Zoo

We then walked to the show area again, this time heading to the Rainforest Fights Back Show. Darius was still sound alseep so we adjusted the stroller just that minimal noise would reach his ears.

The show started off with some tribal villagers dancing to the beat and them inviting an audience to dance with them. Following that, two beautifully white peacocks appeared, followed by various small animals coming out from the backstage.

My first time seeing a white peacock; he's beautiful!

As the story unfolded, animals such as chimpanzee and monkeys came climing out from the overhanging ropes, giving the spectators a refreshing perspective. By the way, the weather was pretty hot then and many were fanning themselves to cool down.

This adorable creature came climbing out from a rope above our heads

Overall, the animals were nice to watch but frankly, there was nothing spectacular about the the show itself, especially when many of the conversations were inaudible to us. Still, since it was the first time we were watching it, it wasn’t too bad an experience.

Just when the show was ending, Darius opened his eyes and woke up from his sleep. Either the noise (though already minimised) or the hot weather (our portable fan failed to operate then) had got him awakened earlier than expected.

Since he had already woken up, we continued on with our original plan for him and headed for the Cat Kingdom to catch one of his favourite animals — the jaguar.

On our way, we came across animals such as the cheetahs, ostriches and lions. He was particularly interested in the cheetah, especially when he was just a window away from the creature.

We also came across the giraffes which we knew Darius was very interested in. I also took out the giraffe toy for him to compare against the real animals, which he did so.

Comparing with the real giraffes

Next up, we finally located the jaguar. Upon comparing the toy ‘jaguar’ that we had brought along however, we discovered that their spots animals were different! Had we all along mistook the toy animal for a jaguar when it could be a leopard or cheetah?

Anyway despite this honest mistake, we decided to still refer to Darius’ toy animal as a jaguar, else he would become confused if we began to teach him otherwise. ^^|

Moving on, we came across a beautiful garden consisting of various species of orchids. The place was so picturesque that we couldn’t resist taking many photos of the flowers there.

As we left the orchid garden, a beautiful horse carriage went past us. Darius’ eyes followed the horse as the carriage moved on while we said ‘Horse’ repeatedly for to him. The horse is one of his favourite animals too so it must have been a great experience for him to see one up close!

The next area we arrived at was the Fragile Forest, a covered area where animals and birds were free to roam about within the vicinity. We came across flying foxes, butterflies and lemurs, just to name a few. We also spotted a docile creature resting on one of the platform lazily, who didn’t mind people getting close and patting him. What a docile animal!

A beautiful butterfly we spotted

With the skies not as sunny as before, we felt that it was time to bring Darius to the Rainforest Kidz World area, where he could get close to the ponies, rabbits, guinea pigs and other house/farm animals and also get wet at the Wet Play area.

Darius touching a docile female pony

So young, yet Darius already knows how to please a lady~ ^^|

Catherine and I had both brought our swim attires along for the wet play but in the end, we decided that I would be accompanying Darius into the water play area. With Darius in his swimwear and me in my casual clothes, we got ourselves wet as we passed through the various splashing areas.

Darius was feeling quite reserved and was resistance to some of the wet areas. I did not want to rush him so just let him play at those less ‘threatening’ areas, such as the one where waters were splashing up from the ground. He was also enjoying scooping water and pouring them away using the toy flowering pot we had brought along. We were glad to have brought it along as it somehow helped calm him down while he concentrated on scooping the water with it.

Just beside where we were, there was the wet playground area where many kids were sliding down from the various slides or waiting for a big splash of water coming down on them, which occured periodically. Everytime the waters came splashing down though, Darius would get a shock and showed an upset look. The big gush of waters coming down of people probably gave him a fright.

Parents were not allowed to slide down together with their children at the playground area so I thought it was still too early for Darius to play with them independently. Instead, we walking through tunnels where water was splashing on us from all directions. Darius didn’t really like the feeling but still, I brought him through them several times so that he could gradually get used to them. We wouldn’t want him to be afraid of water all the time.

With that, we had our fun together and brought him to shower and changing back to his clothes. I had my bath too and we headed out of the Rainforest Kidz World.

Just a short distance away, we came across another garden full of beautiful flowers, which was yet another great spot for photoshooting. I wasn’t really in the mood of taking photos of those flowers however, since I was already feeling tired after a long day. As a result, we just took a few photos of each other with the flowers as backdrops.

We also noticed a statue of the late Ah Meng nearby, a famous orang utan in the zoo and decided to let Darius pose with the statue for a photo.

"Ah Meng, I missed you..."

We then reached the Australian Outback area, where kangaroos were roaming freely in the bound-up place. Darius didn’t dare to get close to them, though he was fascinated when he saw the kangaroos hopping about.

Last but not least, we arrived at the white tiger area. One of the tigers was pacing to and fro along the edge of a cliff, seemingly looking for ways to get closer to us (for whatever reasons…). Darius, on the other hand, could recognise it being a tiger despite its white colour and started saying ‘Ah… ger’ (tiger) repeatedly at the animal.

Finding a way to reach its preys?

"Ah... Ger!"

With that, we ended our trip to the zoo, not forgetting to get a souvenir before we exited from the zoo. The corporate membership card offers 10% discounts in most of the  shops in the zoo, including food and beverages, so the card did help us save quite a bit throughout.

The toy giraffe we bought for Darius

We had a fun day at the zoo with Darius, but will probably only return again when he’s once again much older and could appreciate the performances and animals even more than now

Did we dye our hair? Nopes, it's the reflection from the sun

Related posts:

1. Feeding changes We upgraded Darius’ feeding bottle teat to the ‘variable flow...

This was taken more than a year ago

Darius’ first trip to the Singapore Zoological Gardens was more than a year ago and he was barely 6 months old then. Seeing the bald Darius in those photos reminded me how fast time had flown… ^^|

Last Friday, I was lucky to have gotten a corporate membership pass for the zoo from my company, which would allow free entry into the zoo for up to 4 person. We had been wanting to go to the Zoo for some time and so this would provide for the golden opportunity to bring Darius back there for some animal sightseeing. I had actually planned to bring him to the Animal Resort but since we would be heading for the zoo, that would no longer be necessary for now.

With him much older now than during his last trip to the zoo, and also with us introducing more animals to him during our daily activities, Darius should be able to recognise the animals better and benefit more from this trip. I had also packed a few animal figurines from our safari toy set along so he could compare them with the actual animals. It would be fun seeing his response when he saw his animal toys ‘coming alive’. ^^

On Saturday, we wanted to reach the Zoo early so we would not need to rush through the exhibits, like in our last trip. Also, with Darius expected to take an afternoon nap, we would be having even lesser hours to have him alert and awake during the trip.

Upon reaching the entrance 15 minutes before 11am, we were quite surprised to find out that we were not the only early birds (okay, not that early ) there as the place was already bustling with activities, mainly from parents and their children.

Flashing the corporate and my employee passes, we got into the Zoo and headed towards the Splash Amphitheatre, where the Splash Safari Show would be conducted at 11am sharp. We wanted to watch the show in the morning instead of doing so in the afternoon as Darius could be asleep by then.

Parking our stroller by the side like many other visitors, we then found some seats on the left side of the place. The show soon started and we were introduced to sea creatures such as the manatee (commonly also known as the sea cows), penguins, some pelican-like birds and the star of the show — a sea lion!

Manatees gathering to the front for their food

The sea lion leaping high up to reach the hanging ball

The show was fun to watch as the sea lion performed acrobatic and funny actions. However, we also noticed that Darius was showing a guarded, unhappy look throughout the performance.

Darius' serious look

We didn’t know if he was feeling disinterested or sleepy, until he started whining with tears flowing out his eyes! We did suspect that he wasn’t feeling comfortable with the host’s voices sounding out from the rather loud speakers after our experiences at the church but we were still taken aback when he started crying all of a sudden.

Catherine tried to calm him down by letting his head rest on her shoulder while she hugged her. That did help clam him down though Darius was still looking upset and frightened.

Darius seems to dislike loud noises from the speakers

Though we were disappointed that Darius wasn’t enjoying the performance, we didn’t let that dampen our spirits. After bringing him to the nearby restroom to ease his bladders, we headed back to the performance area for the Elephants at Work and Play Show. The show area was much deeper in and took us quite a while before we could reach there.

Initially, Darius was again showing little interest in what was going on at the center stage while the elephants did their performances. It was only after I carried him about at the area behind the spectators area that he became more comfortable (we also tried to avoid places with speakers blasting the sounds at him directly) to watch the performance. We also kept re-iterating the word ‘elephant’ to him so that he would be able to relate and identify the animals in front of him.

The elephants doing their shows

We didn’t watch through the whole performances though and left halfway through so we could check out the other animals. We came across the Primates Area and saw some monkeys perching on an isolated island surrounded by water.

At that moment, we saw one of them leaping towards a tree near to our side. However, he missed and fell into the water instead but quickly swam up to the surface over on our side. The remaining monkeys on the island gathered and looked towards the lone monkey and one of them even got very close to the water, seemingly trying to reach out to him. Alas, they could only watch helplessly as the wet monkey looked at them pleadingly for help.

We watched for a while before deciding to leave them be, as we wouldn’t want to get too close to the monkey in case it got defensive and aggressive. Instead, we informed one of the zoo’s staff along the way about the situation and believeing that they would bring the lone monkey back where he belonged.

Meanwhile, we let Darius roam along the road himself, which he obviously happily obliged. ^^

Wanting to have an early lunch before Darius was to take his nap, we then headed to the Ah Meng Restaurant (previously known as Restaurants in the Wild) nearby for food. It was relatively crowded but we managed to find seats in the air-conditioned restaurant without much difficulty. Baby chairs were scarce but available.

Looking at the food displays, we were quite surprised at the exorbitant prices of their dishes; a simple chicken rice set cost S$8.90, so was a plate of Nasi Lemak (malay coconut rice). One could easily find them at half the price elsewhere. We had expected the prices of food and drinks at a place of interest to be higher than normal but didn’t expect them to be this high.

$7.00 for this? -_-

We ordered two plates of chicken rice (S$7.00 each for not including the vegetables from the set) and ate them while Catherine fed Darius his porridge. To keep him occupied while eating, I passed Darius his toy elephant figurine since he had just seen the elephants moments ago.

With the metal spoon on one hand, Darius started interacting it with the toy elephant, seemingly imitating the actions the elephants did during the show, such as the lifting of logs. We were glad he could relate to what he had seen earlier.

As for the food we ordered, they tasted worse than what we could get elsewhere, especially the dry and hard rice. To think that they were serving such sub-standard food to our tourists; not the right way to live up our reputation as a food paradise yay?

The deco on the restaurant's walls were already indicative of its food's taste

Finishing our lunch, we headed out and saw a cow display just outside the Ben & Jerry’s, and decided to take a photo of it.

We then planned to head towards the Cat Kingdom to check out the jaguar, which Darius seemed to be so interested in after introducing him to the animal at home. We had wanted to go there earlier while he was still awake. Alas, shortly after we departed from Ah Meng Restaurant, Darius was already dozing off in his stroller…

(to be continued here)

No related posts.

What Is Tot School, see post ‘Tot School’ . How/Why I started the Curriculum below, see post “17th Week“.

This was what Darius learnt at 19months Wk 2.(Wk 1 was a break due to CNY). The 22nd Week Since This Started.

Date: 22 Feb 2010 – 28 Feb 2010

Theme of the Week, Lesson 5 : Fish

I decided to do Fish this week because he finally started ‘noticing’ the fishes after the tank was revamped and managed to say ‘fish’ a little. Can you believe that even though we had two tanks of fishes from the time he was born til now, he didn’t bother looking at them? Everytime we pointed to the fishes, he was more interested in the water filtering and trickling down, staring at the pipes and lights instead. So finally, he had some interest in the fishes and would stare at them while I’m feeding him lunch near the fish tank. And even repeated after me once softly. So it’s time for more in-depth learning about them.

• Word: Fins| Shape: Rectangle | Letter: F | Number: 6 | Nursery Rhyme: Once I Caught a Fish Alive
  

Read on for details below: Long Post With Photos Ahead Read the rest of this entry »

Related posts:

1. Tot School – 21st Week What Is Tot School, see post ‘Tot School’ . How/Why...
2. Tot School -18th Week What Is Tot School, see post ‘Tot School’. How/Why I...