I had a free afternoon with Max and not Katie recently, and I decided it would be fun to go to the zoo! Max and I drove to Apple Valley to the Minnesota Zoo and had a great time. I took a bunch of videos. The first video I took, I had to scramble to get the camera ready to record Max's delight in running toward a large bronze statue of a turtle that is just inside one of the large indoor exhibit areas: Yes, that's right. My son was in such a hurry to run up to the sculpture because he wanted give the turtle a big kiss on the mouth (or on the beak, I guess). Only much later did it occur to him that it might be fun to ride on the turtle's back. I'm sure his priorities will change at some point, but it's rather cute in the meanwhile. On the day that we went to the zoo, Max had three words in his fledgling vocabulary: ball, bird, and duck. (He also learned "mama" and "dada" and "baby" but having mastered them, they no longer interested him