My darling is one today!

This is a blog for happy things, so I will not relate most of the day's events. It was a Murphy's Law kind of day, until we finally arrived at the zoo less than 2 hours before closing time. But you know what? It was perfect. I discovered that I am really, REALLY out of shape, and I could not have made it with our original plan of going around lunchtime.

The layout of our zoo is not convenient to the visitors, in my opinion. You have to walk a long way from the entrance to see any animals. We found the elephants and giraffes first, and C. was completely unimpressed. I thought for sure that Murphy had followed us to the zoo! But C. likes tigers, so I decided we needed to make sure and see the tigers. It looked like it would be a long walk according to the map. My husband took off with the stroller and I kept up the best I could!

It was SO worth it! Her reaction to the tigers was priceless. She shrieked and laughed. I'm sure she recognized them from her video. Everything that had gone wrong that day faded into unimportance as I watched her.

From there things kept getting better. She got to see a lemur, leopards, a red panda, and various exotic birds. She watched the meerkats getting dinner. The lemur and the red panda were so close to her, separated only by the fence or the glass! (The animals are in very good environments, not cages. The glass or wire manages to separate them from people without actually caging them -- a little hard to describe unless you've seen it.

After the zoo, we took her to Carrabba's for dinner. She loves their bread! The wait staff sang "Happy Birthday" to her in Italian, she got her first kids' meal (grilled chicken), and most importantly, her first taste of chocolate! That's one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen on her face -- I guess it's genetic.

Another milestone I forgot to mention: she rode facing forward for the first time today. We were good and followed the law to the letter, haha. Now she knows we're right there and we'd better be paying attention to her! It's going to make for some interesting car rides until we all adjust.

I think being the mommy of a one-year-old is going to be wonderful.