Birthday Zoo!!! (AKA, “Yay Lemurs Yay!!”)

So we were pretty up in the air over what to do for Piper’s actual birthday. We had both taken the day off of work and knew we were going to do something fun with her, but the number of things that are fun, affordable and able to dovetail with the attention span of a one year old are somewhat limited. Also, if you read my previous post you know that I was not signing up for anything resembling a project on the big birthday day.

After tweeting my inability to plan a suitable activity for my daughter, I was rescued by Mandy.

Again. Sigh.

I know I know. Her kid is only a couple of months older than mine so it makes sense that she thinks of these things sooner and I am super-uber-duper grateful (although I think she actually suggested the zoo because she loves it so much, but whatever) but still, I feel like I should probably be able to think of these things. Apparently my ovaries were not correctly reprogrammed in the hospital, maybe because of the scheduled C-Section?

So! We went to the zoo! And we had a great time. It’s not a very big zoo but that was good because of the whole teensy attention span thing. It was close by, cheap, and definitely bore zero resemblance to a project. There was only one gift shop and it was smaller than our living room. Perfecta-freakin-mundo.

Sadly the first exhibit was birds, which is sad because I don’t actually like birds much and am scared of most of them. Please note the look of apprehension that my tiny child and I are SHARING (cuz she’s super smart!!):

Things improved as we wandered the park though, we saw all kinds of cool stuff including alligators and crocodiles and bald eagles and lots of strange cats. We also saw a puma and leopards and a bunch of monkeys and yes, LEMURS. (For the record I have no idea what my thing is with the lemurs.) I didn’t even spend more than a minute looking at them but that may have been because there were howler monkeys next door and they had a tiny baby howler monkey!

Where’s the picture of the tiny baby howler monkey you ask? Well that’s a great question! We don’t have one. As reigning Parents Of The Year it was our duty NOT to charge the camera batteries before leaving the house so that we could run way low on juice, causing us to choose our shots very carefully.

Not to worry. The rest are super cute and I think we made the right call in choosing straight-up-super-cute-Baby Piper Josephine over cute-but-pooping-on-its-parent Baby Howler Monkey. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Girl

Happy Mommy. Silly Baby.

Hugs for Daddy!!

Sometimes I wonder how many hearts she's going to break with this look... slightly devastating.

No, she didn't need me to hold her hand but I wouldn't let go. AND!! How cute is that outfit, right?!?!

Looking at elephant butts. They wouldn't turn around!!

By the time we got through the giant tortioses and the kangaroos and the vultures (really? It’s necessary to put them in a zoo? You can see them anytime you want on the side of the damn road but fine.) it was time for a stroll through the gift shop. We found a fun froggie pull toy and a cute hat and then had a snack while we tried to get past the petting zoo without getting spit on by a llama.

All in all it was a super fun zoo trip. even if the elephants never turned around, no matter how.long.we.waited.

Happy birthday kiddo! We are so proud of you!