The County Fair

Grandpa & Me

Last year, when Xander was only a few months old, we took him to his first county fair.  I've always wanted Xander to be comfortable with animals of every kind, and what better way to warm him up to them than the fair?! :)  We all jumped in the car and headed out to the fairgrounds....on the first day...when a whole lot of nothing was there.  Okay, people had brought stuff to the fair, and there were a few animals there.  But not many.  Not the experience I was going for.

This year, we went a little later on in the week (maybe the 3rd day?).  Xander couldn't get enough of the animals.  Sometimes we carried him and sometimes we let him walk down the aisles of the animal barns.  The entire time we were in the barns Xander was pointing and squealing and exclaiming at the animals.  

We started with the sheep and goats

and then moved on to the pigs

then the cows and horses

and finally the bunnies and chickens and ducks (and a few more goats).  He really wanted to stick his fingers through the cages in this barn so we had to stand back a little farther.

It was worth walking through the mud, in that hot, humid weather to see Xander's reaction.  He LOVED it!  He wanted to touch some of the animals, and really enjoyed it when the goats would walk over to him.  The cows (and sort of the pigs) were a little more intimidating.  Such large animals for such a little boy - and so close!  He did really well, though, and never tried to walk over to the animals where they could kick him or hurt him.  He stayed right on the sidewalk and enjoyed pointing and talking.

I hope you don't mind that I'm including a couple videos taken on my camera.  If you listen carefully, you can hear Xander chatting away with the sheep. :)

In the pig barn, I picked him up and let him lean over the side. He really enjoyed that.  It consisted of more pointing and squealing. :)

Now, my favorite barn is the horse barn (big surprise) and I thought Xander would enjoy this one as well since he's really liked seeing horses.  He pointed at them with delight like all the other animals, although since they were tied to their stalls, most of what we saw were big horse rear-ends!  As we walked around the outside of the barn, a few horses were in pens instead of stalls, so Xander got to pet a few noses and let the horses sniff his hand.  He enjoyed that.  What he did not enjoy was the loud horse at the very end.  This horse didn't seem so happy to be contained in his little pen and was letting everyone know it.  When we got close, he turned toward us and bellowed out a great big whinny.  This scared Xander so much he started to cry.  We had to walk him away from the barn to get him settled down.  Poor little boy.  But he was all better by the time we reached the rabbits.

Anyway - the point is, it was a great afternoon and I'm glad we took him out to the fair. We also took him to the Demolition Derby on Friday night - but instead of posting everything a second time here, head on over to my other blog to read about it and see pictures (CLICK HERE).