Christmas at the zoo

Kelly and I took Zoey and Olivia to the Houston Zoo's Winter Wonderland festival (not sure I remember the name right...), and they had a blast. Not that there was really much at the zoo. The animal exhibits were all closed, so the only thing to do was walk from the front gate to the children's zoo and look at the lights. They had some nice lights. Aside from the typically over-lit tree trunks and huge number of Christmas trees, they had a lot of animals made of lights. So, while you couldn't see the real thing, you could gaze in sentimental awe at the fake, glowing animals.

Kelly and I thought it looked rather nice, but the girls didn't really seem to care. They were way more excited running around, reveling in their freedom (Kelly and I didn't bring strollers). We spent most of our time making sure they didn't wander away from us or into the reflection pond water. This is especially important with Zoey, as she seems to think she can walk on water. I mean that literally. Everytime we've taken her to a body of water--and she's seen rivers, lakes and oceans (well, gulf)--she tries to walk right into it. And she gets extremely pissed off when we don't let her.

Still, kids need the freedom to explore, so you let them. Zoey is way more adventurous than Olivia, though, and so much harder to keep track of. She takes off like a shot and gets lost in her own little world. There was a pretty good crowd most of the time, but Zoey has no problem wandering around in the middle of all the people. Her eyes have a curious wonder in them; she gets lost in her own little world and often doesn't hear me calling out to her. Actually, I suspect she hears me and ignores me. She walked up to one older girl and just said, "Hi!" to her, which the girl and her group thought was adorable (it was). Still, it's a little scary for a parent, and a little extra work. I would have loved to find a place to stop and take some long exposure shots of some of the Christmas light animals, but I would have lost Zoey. You have to make choices.

So we wandered through the zoo, through the fake snow corridor and got to the carousel. Zoey loves the carousel, and always wants to ride it twice. She got so excited upon seeing it that she ignored the "snow." There were a bunch of people riding the carousel, and by people, I mean lots of kids and their camera-toting parents, so we couldn't score an elephant to sit on and settled for a boar. "Bear!" Zoey said as I plopped her down.

"Close enough," I smiled.

The music started, preceding the motor, and Zoey said "Here we go!" in her hyper-excited voice. There was a look of pure ecstasy in her face. They played Christmas music, of course, and Zoey loved it. She shouted "Song!" and started grooving in her seat, Green Bean the frog sharing the seat with her. It was magical, seeing her so happy, so thrilled with the ride, the carnivalesque lighting of the carousel surrounding adding to the surrealness. I glanced back at Kelly and Olivia, who was very upset with the whole experience. Kelly had taken her off her animal and was trying to comfort her, a look of bemused acceptance on her face--there was nothing she could do until the ride stopped. Olivia was not the only child in tears, and you couldn't hear any of them because the music was so loud. The surreal lighting, coupled with the music and the movement created a bubble-effect: you saw the person you were looking at and couldn't focus on anything else without concentration.

The ride ended (thankfully brief, as far as Kelly was concerned) and we got off and headed toward the children's zoo, but there didn't seem to be much there as the animal exhibits were closed. There was a Santa Claus, but we'd both already tried the one in the Galleria with no success ("No more!" Zoey kept repeating as she clung to my neck with her surprisingly strong arms) so we decided to exit the park after Zoey and I rode the carousel "one more time!" This time, we got an elephant.

Flashbulbs were popping all around me, and the announcer said they were waiting on a few more riders before starting. "Now is a great time to take those pictures," she announced, after hawking a Houston Zoo carousel comic book. So I took out my camera and snapped a few shots.



I hate my digital camera. Every time I get her attention for a shot, she's moved by the time the shutter snaps. And it's meters don't always read well, or when I press the shutter down halfway to set the focus it goes ahead and takes a picture. It's frustrating. I want a digital SLR (and a smaller, better camera); my canon's, like, three years old and only 2 megapixels. ech.

After the carousel we hiked back to the entrance among a river of people and strollers, pausing to let Zoey play in the fake snow, which she thought were bubbles. Zoey wanted to run around, but after wandering off and not responding to me, and one time running off completely forcing me to break into a run myself to chase her down, I wouldn't let her. Olivia also wanted to be free of Kelly, but at least she didn't take off at a full run. The thing about chasing down toddlers is they're really cute when they run. It's hard to get really mad when they've got this adorable little baby-butt swivel shaking in front of you. We did let the kids stop and dance in front of the orange light lions. Olivia can really get down. She bounces up and down to the beat and swings her arms back in forth in kind of a Chris Farley ("I live in a van down by the river") way. Zoey joined in with her run in a circle skin head dance. I took some cute video of it with my camera. One of the songs they danced to was "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth," which Kelly said was her theme song this Christmas.

After the zoo, we went into Hermann Park' Festival of Lights. This is a pretty cool thing. The city put of thousands of lights--around trees, in arches and other shapes, on the paddle boats--around the lake in the park. And it looks great. I think it's the first year they've done it, but hopefully it'll stick around for awhile. It's a great place to go if you have family in town and want something Christmas-y--which is hard to do in Houston, where we're likely to be in shortsleeves through much of December. It went all the way around the lake, but Kelly and I settled for a few hundred feet in, where they had some nice light arches.

It was here that something amazing happened: Zoey and Olivia played together for the first time--they really interacted with each other. They played peekaboo and chased each other around a light pillar that had a clear, plastic window. And they had a blast. It was beautiful and fun to watch.