Puffins and ducks and trees...oh my.

Who would take a 3-month-old to the zoo? That's ridiculous. The baby won't even care while the parents focus every minute on trying to find an acceptable place to change their clean little child's diaper. Weirdos.

Okay, so we admit--it was more for us than for Kalina. But we had several good reasons for going, one of which was the beautiful fall day.

The zoo is an hour and a half away--which is three times as far as Kalina has ever traveled in her life. We began by overpacking and overthinking the entire trip. My goal, for instance, was to have every combination of weather-appropriate clothing, as well as a change of all of the clothing because we were planning to use disposable diapers (which seem less reliable than our bulletproof cloth ones). I also narrowed us down to 2 diaper bags, 2 changing pads, 12 diapers, 2 extra outfits, 2 blankets, 3 pacifiers, 3 toys, 2 front baby carriers and asundry other items. We used 1 changing pad, 4-5 diapers, 1 blanket, 1 front baby carrier and 2 pacifiers.

We overslept, but then "hurried" out the door. Meaning we left at about 9:30. Kalina pretended to be asleep the entire car ride so we wouldn't sing silly songs to her the whole way.

Matt commented that the zoo seemed to be not so much a place to see animals, but more of a place to wheel a stroller. He was right. The zoo even rented strollers for those who didn't have them. I think there were more stroller seats than children, and we even saw rather large children riding in them (rednecks).

We had a good time, but it felt like we were on something of a scavenger hunt, simply checking items off a list. "There's the lion!" "Oh cool, let's go get Kalina out of the sun." "There's a monkey!" "Great! She's waking up and needs a diaper change." "Did you see the grizzly bear?" "No, but that's okay, I've seen them before." And so forth.

Kalina seemed to enjoy herself, or at least tolerate the trip, but we don't know if she saw more than 1 or 2 animals the entire time. "Look at the elephant, Sweetie!" "What's an elephant?" And she'd gaze at yet another tree.

There were two exceptions: puffins and ordinary ducks. In the puffin room, the lights were dim, but the tank was lit. This made it so Kalina knew where to look (like a moth, she always looks toward the light when given a choice). There were two puffins swimming around right in front, so chances are at least one of them caught her eye. We think the puffins were her favorite.

We think she also managed to watch some ducks at a small pond. We were standing over them on a bridge, and I held her so she could see over the raling. Sure enough, she stared right at the ducks! She kept staring, then, as they swam past--at the water where they'd been. Oh well.

Tragedy struck as Matt and I were enjoying irresistable, yet vile, hotdogs at a picnic table (Matt said they were the type of food you only had to have once or twice a year to get enough of them--which means they were greasily delicious). Kalina's favorite pacifier fell in the dirt. Trusting nothing except heavy-duty cleaning at home to remedy that nastiness, we resorted to backups. The first was too big--the poor girl couldn't get a good grip. The second was acceptable, albeit clearly second-rate. We wonder if the ride home would've gone better with Old Faithful.

On the ride home we had a few tears. Kalina let us know it'd been a big day and she didn't appreciate having to ride home in the backseat all alone, facing back no less. A month ago we would've had to spend the night along the highway in order to get her to stop crying. Yesterday, however, she fussed a little and actually calmed down, although we could tell by the resolute "I'm suffering but I'm a big girl now so I won't complain" look in her eyes that she wasn't happy about the whole business.

I've never been so exhausted, by the way. I was a stress bucket the whole day. Has she had enough "Mommy" time? (She's really attached.) Is she getting hungry? Does she need a new diaper? Has she been in the sun too much? Is she tired? And repeat. However, each successful trip will only add to my confidence. Who knows? Maybe next time I'll only pack one extra outfit.

1st picture: Mommy, Kalina, Lion 1, Lion 2
2nd picture: Kalina, Mommy Not pictured: Elephants