A Day At the Houston Zoo {Not Our Best Idea}

Bo got off work early last Friday, so we had this brilliant idea to wake Marty up from his nap early, and take him to the Houston Zoo! He is getting so stinkin' good at those animal sounds, after all. And wouldn't he love to go see some real animals up close? Rookie parent mistake, y'all. Until we put him back to bed for the night several hours later, he pretty much looked like this:

The crying started when I picked him up out of his bed. I snuggled him for a few minutes and tried to explain that we were going bye-bye to the zoo, but he didn't want any of what I was selling. Things only escalated as I proceeded to dress him, carry him out to the car, and strap him into the carseat. We should have aborted the plan at that point. We should have taken his kicking and screaming and tears as a sign of things to come, but instead, we fed him graham crackers and told ourselves that once he saw the animals, he would dry it up and be happy.

Shocker, it didn't happen that way. At all. He was hot and sweaty and tired. And there were millions of Texas-sized mosquitos feasting on us the whole time we were there. The poor kiddo didn't have much fun at all.

There were, however, a few moments where he was distracted juuuuuust enough to seem happy. Until he wasn't. Here are some images that I managed to snap in between meltdowns. It is amazing how photos of five percent of an outing can almost convince you that the other ninety-five percent wasn't that bad... 

When Marty saw/heard his daddy bust out some cool beats on these African drums, he forgot all of his woes (for a minute) and joined the fun. Mr. Graham Cracker Face was all smiles until we wanted to move along to the carousel before it closed. Cue meltdown. He sat down in the middle of the walkway and wailed. Bo ended up carrying him to the carousel because, I promise you, that stubborn little dude would have sat there all night just to prove his point (he gets that from me is how I know).

Catching a glimpse of all those brightly painted animals, with all the mirrors and lights and music, was all it took to settle him down once again. He fought his way out of Daddy's arms and ran up to the fence for a better look. I watched him taking it all in, and thought how magical that giant spinning machine must seem to a little boy. And so, while Bo was off buying Marty a ticket to ride, the stinker decided that he wasn't very fond of all this waiting around nonsense, and tried to sneak into the ride without a ticket. Little devil.

We finally got our turn, and Marty chose to ride on this silly monkey eating a banana. I think his choice was based solely on the banana. Maybe he thought the monkey would share?

The end of our ride was the beginning of the next tantrum. And that is how it went. We would find something to make him happy for a short while, and when it was time to move on, he let every patron and animal in that zoo know that he was miffed.

Needless to say, our trip to the zoo was cut very short due to all the 'tude flying around that day. Yet somehow, we still managed to meet a few animals before we admitted defeat. Marty's favorite by far was this very ordinary black bird that was walking around in front of the Rhino exhibit.

Toddlers.