It shouldn't surprise anyone that my son has the most prolific vocabulary in the language of Animal Speak. His English is progressing, but not like his animal noises. My favorite is elephant, because he tips his head back to lift his nose when he does it. Why does he communicate with animals better than he does with people? Is it because my grandparents have two cats and my parents own a zoo? Or is it because we live in Amish country where there are a plethora of farm animals? Perhaps it's his animal bath toys? Does his brother look like a monkey? Most likely, it's all of the above, but whatever the reason, Nolan is far more interested in animals than all other interests combined. And this week I became aware of a little "petting zoo" (it's actually just a bunch of fenced in animals along the side of the highway) a quater of a mile down the road -complete with a donkey that blurted out "hee haw hee haw" the first time we visited and sent Nolan running the other way. Don't worry, though, he warmed up quickly to the donkey and went on to love all the other animals. There were lots of goats, even a little baby goat, alpacas, sheep, big smelly pigs, geese, hens, roosters, peacocks, a bunny, a dog, and a bunch of funny looking birds that I couldn't identify. Yay! Another fun thing to do with Nolan! The only problem with having something so amazing closeby is the difficulty of getting him into his carseat when it's time to leave. I guess we could just camp out there. Nolan laughs at the way the pigs wiggle their noses. He touches them. He also picks up rocks and tries to feed them to the pigs. One time, while he was trying to feed the rocks to the pigs, I looked down at the rock he was currently using to tease them and noticed it was kind of brown looking. Gross! It was a nice big round dried up pig terd that had escaped from the pig pen! The pigs weren't convinced and I decided it was time to leave.