We recently took Baby Bird for her first trip to the zoo, and it turned out comically, as most things in our life do.

I didn’t expect her to be wowed by the animals — I think she’s still too young for that — but I did expect her to at least look at the animals.

We were 20 yards from a beautiful tiger, and she refused to look at it. Instead, she stared at the young couple beside us.

The flamingos were wonderfully vibrant, but again, she refused to look. Instead, she analyzed the grass growing around the exhibit.

Two elephants were no more than 30 feet from us, and she had an unobstructed view. How could she ignore the majestic creatures?

Easily.

She spotted an ant on a railing and decided to track its journey. Seriously. This is the ant:

At least, I think it’s an ant. It’s so damn small I can’t say for sure.

She ignored the lioness and the gorillas, and she slept through the aquarium and the cheetahs. She even missed this creature — a lemur, I think — who decided to let it all hang out.

(In his defense, it was quite warm in the primate building.)

No problem, I thought. I’ll just take some pictures — which will turn out AMAZING — and we can learn about the animals together.

Good plan. Horrible execution.

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I clearly have no photography skills, so I added captions so you know what you’re seeing.

I could’ve been upset about the day being a bust … but it really wasn’t.

Once Baby Bird went to sleep, Mr. T and I explored the rest of the zoo. Family Day didn’t go as planned, but it led us into … a date.

I can’t remember the last time we went on a date.

We talked about our dreams for Baby Bird and for our family. We talked about traveling. We talked about his dad. We walked and we talked — and it was really nice.

For an afternoon, we felt like a couple with a baby instead of just Baby Bird’s parents. We kinda felt like the old us.

The day gave me hope for more happy family moments.

Thank goodness there were no pesky animals around to distract us.