The Proud Moments and The Less So

Hightlights of today's day trip to the Santa Barbara Zoo:

1. Ariel falling asleep immediately upon hitting the highway on the way there, Elan staying awake for the entire 2.5-hour traffic crunch, doing his amazingly-life-like impression of the "are we there yet" kid we see on family road-trip horror films.

2. Y tolerating the entire playlist I'd hurriedly burned for the car, as well as me singing along to every single song, at the top of my lungs, with my feet on the dashboard.

3. Y's moment to shine when my CD finally ended, we flipped to the radio, and Kenny Rogers's "We've Got Tonight" comes on with fuzzy reception. Y grins, takes his turn singing at the top of his lungs to his kind of music. I feel sudden burst of affection for my nerdy, crap-music-loving better half, and lovingly massage his neck.

4. Y ruins the moment by insisting I continue the massage for the remainder of the drive, tapping the back of his head whenever my arm aches and drops, taking me to unprecedented heights of both annoyance and eye-rolling. To hell with spontaneity.

5. Elan washing his hands, on his own initiative, after a mad-dash to the restrooms immediately upon arrival. I didn't have to fight him or nothing. So proud.

6. Elan insisting upon waiting in a 15-minute line to feed the giraffes and have them lick you in return, jumping up and down in anticipation. $3 later, he panicks once it's finally our turn, engulfed in terror at the sight of their heads at arm's distance, and will only approach the creepy animals in my arms. Giraffes lick me, instead of him, it's way grosser than it looked from afar, and the hand-sanitizer dispenser is conveniently empty. I feel violated and dirty. Giraffes are no longer my favorite animal in the zoo.

5. One giraffe has a broken neck, bent at a 90-degree angle, three-quarters of the way towards the head. Zoo staff hastily defend its honor, claiming it was born that way. It's horrifying, likely to induce nightmares in the entire family. I don't believe zoo staff and begin to imagine there is a giraffe conspiracy going on among them. Paranoid, am I? Or so incredibly right THAT IT TERRIFIES YOU??

6. Black-and-White Lemurs, showing off their swinging abilities, become suddenly agitated while we gaze at them, and all at once begin jumping frantically, letting out scary shrieks in high-pitched tones. Onlookers are shocked, confused, upset - especially Elan. The lemurs finally stop, stare menacingly at a frozen, silent crowd. A brave little Ariel breaks the silence by marching right up the the cage, shaking his finger at the animals while scolding: "NO NO NO, Zaboos!" Zaboo is short for "Zaboomafu," a 6:30 AM show on PBS about a black-and-white lemur. Lemurs look appropriately ashamed.

7. Ariel believes the elephants are dinosaurs. His request to "touch" the Kong-sized gorilla is denied.

8. Ariel demonstrates evidence that he is beginning to learn to count. Unpromted, he points to one "monster" (sting-ray) in the aquairum house, and then to another, calling it "two monster." He later repeats the one-two count in the car, with regard to his feet*.

9. Elan falls asleep immediately upon hitting the highway on the way home. Ariel stays awake for the entire 1.5-hour traffic crunch, resuming his screeching-in-the-car method in the hopes of forcing entertainment out of his mother. When his toy snake gives him a boo-boo, I do a show of chastising the snake, putting it in time-out, while it begs for mercy. Ariel finds this hilarious, and insists that I keep it up for twenty minutes straight, lest he resort back to eardrum-busting.

10. *Bored with the snake show, Ariel insists that I take off his socks and shoes and smell his stinky feet, then dramatically shriek and fake a faint from the outrageous odor. He believes that his feet stink because Y has been telling him so since he was born. It's not entirely untrue, though I believe the condition has improved since it got warm outside and he stopped sleeping in fleece onesies with footies attached. Ariel thinks it's hysterical to force Y and me to smell his feet, which he for some reason calls "knees," and gets a serious kick out of the grossed-out reaction we exaggerate for his benefit. In the car, the funny and cute of it wears off quickly.

11. At the pizza place in Agoura Hills on the way home, both boys find new passion for mozzarella sticks. So do I.

12. As we unload the car, Elan recalls thirty minutes earlier, in the pizza shop parking lot, when I pointed out to him what I thought was a butterfly. "Mommy 'hought it was a butterfly, but it really was a grasshopper, just like a few days ago, when I 'hought I saw a bee, but it was really a June bug." Our almost-four-year old exhibits signs of a future propensity for the parallels section on the SATs, drawing a connection between "occurances of mistaken identity involving insects." We are immeasurably proud, filled with joy, and not just because Elan pronounces words with a "th" sound by simply dropping the T and using the H, instead of substituting an "F" for the "th" like most kids do.

Although it does make everything that much more enjoyable.