At the Zoo for Down Syndrome Day

Minnesota is enjoying record warmth all through the month of March so the Fabrizios have been out and about enjoying their new home.  This weekend we had a special occasion to celebrate, and we wanted to make sure we blogged about it.

March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day (3/21 - get it?) so this year it fell on Wednesday.  We decided to wait until the weekend so that we would have more time to celebrate.  We took Henry to the Minnesota Zoo and spent the morning exploring. 

Here's a picture of Henry and mommy in front of the gibbon exhibit.  A millisecond after this was taken Henry latched on to Katie's face and hair in a monkey move of his own!
 


The Minnesota Zoo has a great monorail that goes around a lot of the zoo, and you can see many of the animals really well.  Henry really enjoyed watching everything from above.

He also liked all of the colorful fish in the aquatic section.  He was fascinated by blue colored fish and the sea dragons, too.

Later in the day back at the house we took a picture of him in front of his special day banner that Katie made for him.  We hang up our special day banner whenever there's something to celebrate.  (Yes, we have Fran's and Katie's banners too - we all get special days!)

We had a lot of fun on our first visit to the zoo, and I'm sure we'll be back lots of times.  We also found time to go for a walk and play on the swing and the slide at the local park.  Henry went down the slide all by himself for the first time today!  He was quite proud of himself.  And in one final triumph, he ate a cheetoh all by himself today too!  Talk about proud!  He went bonkers.  He's been working really hard at being able to eat crunchy things, so we were all very excited at this achievement.

It was a great way to celebrate Henry's special day, and we look forward to many more in the years ahead!