Naomi's Skill

Well, we took our first "vacation" in Brazil. Traveling anywhere with two little munchkins with planes, trains, buses, taxis, etc. isn't the most relaxing thing, but we had a great time none-the-less. Both Shannon and my passports are expiring the beginning of next year, and we thought it would be good to get them renewed with plenty of time left. So we headed out Monday afternoon for São Paulo. We were in awe of the city, never seen such an enormous city in our lives!!! Some estimates at over 20 million people!

We went to the Consulate on Tuesday morning, and were pleasantly surprised that it only took us about an hour to get everything taken care of. We had done some searching the night before for things to do. Shannon talked me in to not being cheap, so we sprung the US$15 for the four of us to go to the São Paulo zoo. It was amazing, there were over 3000 animals. The kids had a blast and we spent about four hours there.

Of course, it's always an adventure. Caleb was getting exhausted and wanted to be carried everywhere, but wouldn't fall asleep. So we were carrying him for a while and then putting him down to walk. (Important to note, Caleb does not know how to walk, we've never observed that phenomenon, he runs EVERYWHERE)! Well, sure enough, at one point we had put him down and were looking for an entrance to this kid's place. We got sidetracked and Shannon, Naomi, and I looked at this other exhibit. We seriously hadn't turned our head for more than 10 seconds, turned around and Caleb was gone. Shannon went running one direction, I took off in the other with Naomi, our hearts were just about stopped. Shannon found him around the corner a good 1000 feet or so away, behind a fence, just standing. She was tearing up and all he says is "I didn't find the way in yet mom".

This was towards the end of the day and we were all exhausted, and pretty angry at that point too. At the same time we were relieved, so we sat down on a bench to take a break. Caleb was finally starting to fall asleep sitting on Shannon. Naomi was mentioning every three seconds what animals we still had left to see. As we were sitting there, we heard a bird shaking a bunch of leaves above our heads. Shannon asked me what it was, and I replied "at this point, I'm not going to bother looking, it's probably a pigeon and there's a great chance it's about to crap on us." Naomi rolled her eyes at me and said, "don't worry Dad, I'll find the bird and figure out what it is". She got up and walked back into some bushes and was looking all around this tree while we sat there trying to gather up some energy. All of the sudden Naomi shouted "daddy, come look, it's one of those cool birds from your book" I walked over, still expecting a pigeon, and saw this:



How AWESOME! My daughter totally spotted a Red-breasted (or Green-billed) Toucan. It was sitting on a branch at a height of about 7 feet, right above us. We stared at it, and were amazed. It stayed just long enough for me to pull the camera out, and then it took off out of the park and into some more forest (the zoo is actually located in the middle of a massive forest area that is preserved inside of the city). I found this picture on the web.

I had to take the time to celebrate my daughter and her amazing birding skills. It's something that the kids and I have loved to do together. They like to find me birds, make up names for them, and then run screaming and roaring at the birds as they chase them away. Shannon's probably going to get some pictures up later on Facebook about how that doesn't always work out great, especially in the case of ducks and geese, a whole other story!