Unfortunately, we arrived after the blessing part was over, but we still got to walk around and check out the living history stuff and all the booths with pet related paraphernalia. Penny wandered around all over the place carrying with her a hickory nut and a stick. At one point we met a sweet dog who very much wanted Penny to pet him, but she could not decide which of her trinkets to put down in order to do so. It was very funny to watch her think about it. She’d go to sit one item down and then decide against it and try to put the other one down and decide against that and so it went for a good minute or two. She finally decided to hang on to them both and just walked off away from the dog! So, off we wandered stopping every so often for her to exchange whichever hickory nut she was carrying with a new one she spied on the ground. Then, over by the chicken coop we saw this guy:
He’s a Hickory Horned Devil caterpillar and even though my car keys are in this photo, it is hard to get an idea of how massively huge he was. Biggest caterpillar I have ever seen. Luckily, Penny got interested in Lindy and Jake’s leashes around that time (see above) and did not attempt to pick up the caterpillar. After that, a nice lady in a golf cart offered to give P and me a ride, so we went for a golf cart ride back to our car. I love going places like this with Penelope, but I would love it if we lived closer to the places that we went so that she wasn’t stuck in the car seat for 45 minutes plus each way. I’ve often wondered if we lived more like 10 or 15 minutes from places like, oh say, the grocery store, that perhaps she would not mind being in the car seat. Who wants to be confined in a car seat for an hour and a half to go buy milk?
To that end, yesterday we took a ride in the opposite direction from our house and went down to the coast. In this part of Florida we do not have beaches, per se, but instead miles and miles of wetlands. It’s very beautiful in its own right though. We rode down to the lighthouse at the St. Marks NWR (which took approximately 20 minutes). The water there just sort of gently laps up to the coast and is perfect for wading. Before I get into that though, I have to tell this small anecdote. On the way down, I was doing my best to keep her entertained and she wanted to read “But Not the Hippopotamus” over and over again. Well, I would shake my head from side to side as I read the phrase “but not the hippopotamus” and she would imitate me with a very serious look on her face, like, “No Mommy. Not the Hippopotamus.”
Anyway, we stopped at the visitor center so Tray could buy a duck stamp, and they have a small exhibit area and gift shop. The exhibit contains several dioramas of animals and Penny enjoyed looking at those. Then, in the gift shop they had several shelves of kid’s books that she briefly perused and then, then!, she found a bin full of those stuffed birds that chirp the real bird call if you squeeze their talk boxes. You should have seen the huge excited grins she would give us every time we squeezed a different bird.
Once we got to the coast (and all requisite bug spray and sunscreen had been applied) she had a ball walking around in the water with her pants rolled up. I wish so much that we’d had a swimsuit for her (or, technically, myself since she could have gone nekkid) because she kept trying to go out deeper into the water. She loved it! The thing that just melted my heart though was every so often as we walked around she would look up at me with this look of just total adoration. It was like there was so much love in her face when she looked at me that I thought my heart would just stop beating right there. Everyone deserves to be looked at like that at least once in their lives, and she kept looking at me like that over and over again!
After we’d been there a little while, we decided to leave the Refuge and head over to St. Marks to eat a late lunch at Riverside. Riverside is an open air restaurant right on the St. Marks River. You can even boat to it (which we have in fact done before). This is going to sound bad, but Penny had never been to a restaurant before. Well, technically she went on my birthday when she was 6 weeks old, but not since. In our defense though, we don’t eat out and didn’t before we had her so it’s not like our habits changed. Anyway, I was a little anxious as to how it would go. I wasn’t sure if she’d sit through a meal, but it was great! They had those restaurant high chairs and we got one for her, but she freaked out and got all clingy when I tried to put her in it, so she sat in my lap instead. And she didn’t squirm even once. She just sat there and ate and pointed out the seagulls and people watched. I was greatly impressed. It was a big day and she took a nice nap after we got home. We all had a really fun weekend. I love doing stuff as a family!
Behold! Pictures:
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