Animal House

I have had tens and tens of awesome ideas of what to blog about... and I can't believe what just compelled me to action.

DogTV.

For only $5.99 a month on DirecTV, you can get an extra channel - just for dogs who are stay-at-home-dogs and hanging out alone.  It's a new channel, so we get it free for 30 days.  I was curious, so I turned it on for a bit (the baby was napping... there was nothing on TV).  It appears to be "life of a dog" and so far is just classical music and watching a dog walk through a field.  Or a dog park.  Or watching a dog play "tug."

What has this world turned into where we are willing to spend an extra $6 a month for our dogs to get their own channel?

And the funny thing is, my friend Jake has a dog who barks any time she sees another animal on TV.  (even if it's a cartoon, or there's a "man walking a dog" in the background of a scene... she barks EVERY TIME.  Like, even at Geico commercials with the gecko.)  So, to me, this feels like it's the opposite of helpful.  UGH.  (First World Problems.)

Unrelated:

Lily and I stopped at the zoo today.  St. Louis has a terrific zoo, and it's free.  Well, it's $10 for parking, but it's free.  And I've been told where the "locals" park, so that's free, too.  It's completely out of my way, but today I was running some errands in the Missouri, and thought I would swing by with Lily for a few minutes.  And since it's free, you can spend like 30 minutes and call it a day.  Although we passed (and stopped at) many animal habitats, I'm relatively sure that Lily saw only kids, plants, fish (at the hippo encounter), and elephants.

Isn't it cool to see hippos under water?  There are also tons of fish for them to.... eat?

Apart from the butterflies (which she really loved the last couple of times at the zoo), I'm not totally sure she "gets" the entire "Zoo Experience."  Which is understandable, I mean, she isn't even one yet, so I just push her around to look at different rocks/plants/kids legs.  But today, she "got" it for about 5 minutes.

The baby elephant is darker than her aunts.  (I heard a zoo-person telling a group all about it.)

There are 10 elephants at the St. Louis zoo.  And one of them is a baby.  I held Lily and we looked at the baby elephant for about 3 minutes.  She was transfixed.  There were elephants, and they were huge, and eating their hay (and the weather was particularly amazing, so everyone was enjoying themselves).   I told her all about how "E is for Elephants with very big feet"  and every other elephant-related thing we do at home... and I think she got it.  I mean, I went to put her down, and she squooze my arm and pointed to the elephant, so we sat there for another 3-4 minutes... just looking.  I felt like it was a moment.

Also, there was a waterfall in the habitat... so... she could have just really liked looking at the waterfall.

Either way, isn't it nice when you see a baby grow up a little bit and notice new things?