Saturday, June 02, 2012

Our day at the zoo

We went to the San Diego Zoo for the Bridgepoint Education Family Picnic. We all went around 9:30 (Sophia, Lara, me, Karen, Leonilda), but Lara got tired early and left around noon. Sophia and I stayed until about 5pm, then took Karen to the airport for her trip to Texas for 5 days. She completely crashed in the car on the way home, while simultaneously telling me she wasn't sleepy. Sophia LOVED her pink cat face painting, and was sad when we washed it off at bath time. She told EVERYONE about it at dinner in Daphne's, Subway, Jamba Juice, and Starbucks, and got a lot of attention.

Overall a good day, and a great reward for her filling up her Heart Board! (probably more on that later). Anyway, typing this on my phone, so forgive terseness and any oddly autocorrected words!

"I'm ready to go to the zoo!"
"But first, let me show you my zoo dance!"
Sophia plots our course
The first major hit, the duck pond!
We realized there was a direct relationship with how much they liked certain animals to how close they could get to them.  The ducklings and goats won first billing as Sophia's favorites, followed closely by the snakes, turtles, and the polar bear that could have eaten from my hand.
"Can I ride the peacock?"
Mammoths are much bigger up close... but this one hiding here was Sophie-sized
Riding a saber-tooth cat - I'm not sure it likes it, but she sure did
The extinct American Lion.  HUGE!  I wouldn't have wanted to run into one of those around here a few hundred thousand years ago!
This is my friend Frank the polar bear.  We really bonded while he chewed the meat from his bone.  He could have bear hugged me if not for the foot+ thick glass.  Probably a good thing.
Lunch with a few thousand of my closest friends from Bridgepoint
Sophia saw the face painting booth, and suddenly wanted nothing else.  I didn't think she could hold still, but she did an amazing job hopping right up on the chair, tilting her head back and closing her eyes and just waiting, before the woman even told her to!  She sat more still for a longer time than I can remember ever having seen her do, ever!  
The end result... Note:  this is NOT a pink tiger!  And she wasn't a real cat... she just has a pink cat face, she was still a person-girl.  She wanted to make that very clear.
Self-pictures are a LITTLE easier with a mirror... she spent a while staring into this mirror, and we came back to it several times
We petted goats, lambs, and a little horse.  The Wild Animal park (er, I guess now it is the Zoo Safari) is a bit more interesting, letting you pet gazelles, but she still had fun petting these.
She was very interested in the giant snapping turtle.  And I do mean giant, it was as big as her!  Me: "Sophia, smile!" Sophia: "Ok daddy... turtle, SMILE!!!  SMILE turtle!  Daddy, is he smiling?!"
A nearby group pitied my outstretched-arm self portrait attempts, and took this.. glare, sadly, keeps you from seeing the TURTLE (who I'm sure was smiling), but it at least got us
Me: "It was a long day, and you didn't have a nap.  Are you sleepy or tired?"  Sophia: "No, Daddy, I'm not tired at all!  I still want to see more animals!"
About 10 seconds after the above picture, mid sentence claiming she wasn't tired, she trailed off.  I talked a bit, no response, so looked back and saw this.  She didn't wake up with a little voice prompting, was totally out.  Clearly "not tired"!