We started out on Tuesday evening at Sea World. We'd gotten tickets that allowed us to go back as many times as we wanted to plus visit Aquatica, Sea World's water park. L had a hard morning on Tuesday (with the emergency room visit) so we took it pretty easy and had it in mind to turn in early.
We were pleasantly surprised that the parking was free because it was later in the evening. We headed on in and found ourselves first at the manta rays exhibit. You can actually purchase food and feed them, but you can also stick your hand in and touch them. We just looked.
We then headed around to the dolphin pool. L loves fish (and for our purposes, dolphins are fish :o) but they are hard for her to see when we are looking down from above. Mostly she was excited about the water, and kept signing "water," but she also noticed the giant water bird in the cage and kept signing, "bird" which is what she's doing here.
It was really awesome to see the dolphins though.
L was bored after a few minutes so we walked on. We noticed that there was an underwater viewing area so we headed in just to take a look. It was so awesome. L absolutely loved it. The dolphins were so much easier for her to see than they were above ground and they would swim right up to the glass on their way around the pool. It was really really neat.
L didn't want to leave the dolphins, and really they were perfect for her. They swam really fast and moved all the time, so it was easy for her to see them. After being there for awhile, we decided to move on and headed towards the manatee rescue exhibit. The manatees were the absolute opposite of the dolphins. They mostly laid on their rocks, coming up for air every once in a while. They were so cute! We also had to leave the stroller behind, which sort of opened a door for us. Because they weren't doing much, L wasn't much interested and we zipped through the exhibit, but L was happy to be on her feet.
We checked out an aquarium and a water ride and headed to the park's big scary roller coaster, "Kraken." It looked very scary to me. The wait was only ten minutes, so Brad got in line and we walked around.
L is a little too short I think.
(the chair is actually there to make certain that you fit properly, but I thought it was too cute)
L loved watching the roller coaster go by. She would watch it and then giggle. She's probably gonna love riding them with her Daddy someday.
L also had the best time pushing her stroller around.
Brad loved the coaster. Which is good, because it was all spinning teacups from there on out! He was all smiles when he came off the coaster.
Wednesday was a much less eventful day around here. Brad and I were woken up to the sounds of little person chatter at 7:15. We all got dressed and ready and headed to ihop for breakfast.
After breakfast L and I went to the mall which isn't far from our hotel. I was hoping to find a playground, but they didn't have one! Since the mall wasn't open yet, I let her out of her stroller and she ran around for awhile and when that got boring we loaded up in the car and went to Kelly Park.
Kelly park was recommended to me by a friend of a friend as a great destination for kids in Orlando. I put it in my gps and off we went. The thing that surprised me the most was how long it took us to get there. The park is about 25 miles north of our hotel, and it wasn't a problem, but I was surprised! We arrived and there was admission to the park, and they didn't take credit cards, so I had this moment of oh-my-goodness-it-took-us-almost-an-hour-to-get-here-and-now-they-won't-let-us-in panic, but the park ranger let us pass since we were only going to the playground.
Kelly park actually has a natural spring that bubbles into a sort of lazy river. You can rent an innertube and float from one end of the spring to the other and then walk back to the other end and do it again. L is still way too little for anything like that, but we saw several people heading to towards the spring. We just drove around to the playground located at the back of the park to play.
L was so excited to get out of the car and we were the only people on the playground so it was nice.
I kept trying to get her to smile. Normally, when I have the camera out she will look at me and say "CHEESE!" or if I say, "Can you smile?" then she gives me her whole face cheesey grin. Today, she did not want to smile, and I wasn't going to push it, so I got a lot of these photos.
The playground equipment itself was a little bit old for L. There were a lot of slides, but they were tall and L was nervous about them since we were sliding the other day near our house and the green slide there was really hot. So... her normal favorite playground activity is sliding, but we didn't do much of that. Mostly she just did her own thing, which is a nice thing to be able to do because the hotel room doesn't offer much in the way of roaming.
I did convince her to slide once. We slid down together (her on my lap) once and then she really wanted to go by herself, so she did.
When she arrived at the bottom of the slide she started throwing mulch. She'd already been warned twice about it (this is a common playground rule infraction for us) and so she had to sit in time out. It was really cute, actually. I was at the top of the structure and I said, "L, Mama said no throwing mulch, that's a time out!" and I started to get down and walk around to where she was and she had already put herself in time out on the steps. When I got there she promptly started crying (a new time out tradition)...
...and holding her arms out so I would pick her up out of time out...
...and then got distracted by the birds chirping and stopped crying just in time to get out of time out.
Just take a look at those eyes! That is one tired little girl, but she'd never admit it.
We decided to swing next and we saw a lizard!
Sadly, it ran away when L got close enough to get a good look, but it was exciting nonetheless. We also saw a bunch of squirrels, which apparently look like cats. Whenever Lily sees a squirrel she says, "ow!"
So we got to swinging.
L got tired of swinging and we walked back toward the play structure. I think we were both getting tired of being at the playground, but L had just one more thing to explore.
She found a giant stick. I don't know what it is with kids and their sticks, but she was really excited about her find.
I got her to bring it over to me and I threw it into the woods to keep it from being dangerous to kids on the playground and she sat down beside me on the bench. I asked her, "L, can you smile?" in my sweetest mommy voice and I got this...
I love the snot dripping out of her nose. I love that face. It's a I'll-tell-you-what-you-can-do-with-that-camera-if-you-ask-me-to-smile-again face.
She hopped back down and found some other nature paraphernalia. She loved these little branches, she spent some time sweeping the sidewalk with them.
When she went and sat on the bench again, I asked her if she wanted to go and she started walking toward the car, so I knew it was time. (notice that she's checking out her shadow, this is a new and a very cute thing)
I was nervous about the drive home. We had around 45 minutes of driving and she was looking awfully sleepy. I kept chattering at her when I noticed she stopped chattering back and turned around to find her asleep in the back. I almost had her transferred into her bed and I hopped in the shower because I figured that she would doze right off, but she did not.
The thing that I find amazing about baby sleep patterns is this. If L does not get enough sleep, then she finds it very difficult to fall and stay asleep. It's an awful cycle, so if she's overtired then she just gets more overtired and more overtired until some great nap or great night's sleep comes along and solves the problem. It's weird, because when I'm overtired... it just makes me want to sleep.
After quite a bit of fussing and eyerubbing, but no sleeping (and the 30 minutes she got on the road was simply not going to cut it) I scooped her up and we laid on the bed together. That ended up being how she napped for the rest of the trip.
So Wednesday night we set out for Sea World. According to the map we have we saw less than half of it on Tuesday so our plan was to go back. On the way, we got distracted by needing to eat and decided instead to go to downtown disney.
It was sunny, so L wore her sunglasses, you know, for like two minutes.
We wanted to eat and it seemed like a good night to eat someplace crazy and kid friendly so we decided to eat at the T-Rex restaurant. (photos taken afterwards)
It looks insane. It WAS insane! They have animatronic dinosaurs and other bizarre things inside. I think L liked it, although they have a "meteor shower" every 20 minutes, and she did not really like that. After we put our names in we had 20 minutes or so, so we occupied ourselves by taking some photos and by visiting the build-a-dinosaur shop (it was a build-a-bear only they had dinos instead). L continued her trend of smiling for the day. :o)
Doesn't she look happy? HA HA!
L picked out her dinosaur and she didn't care much about the building it part, but she loves that dinosaur.
After we sat down Brad and L took the opportunity to visit the dinosaurs throughout the restaurant and I took the opportunity to take a few photos of our seat. We were in the water section of the restaurant. It was neat, but wow it was loud. The food was amazingly not bad. It was fun.
Here's a new twist to the "L can you smile?" saga.
The kid is too smart for us. I don't know what we're going to do when she's a teen.
We went to through the "World of Disney" store just to get her photo with her Mickey ears like we did last year. She's not crazy about wearing them.
We saw a "choo choo" that L enjoyed (she's signing train).
We passed a store that had this Mickey and Minnie and she ran right up to them, though we didn't get the photo until she was ready to get down, but I thought that it was really cute that she ran up to the statues. She's usually more excited to look at things like that from far away, but apparently the dinosaurs warmed her up.
Our destination was actually the toy store. There's a giant mr. potato head display where you can fill a box with all these potato head parts for various disney characters (or just interesting costumes if you aren't aware really of what it is... I don't think L will think it's a pirates of the carribean potato head, but just a pirate potato head...). We filled our box, and I think we got a mr. incredible, a pirate, a darth vader, a minnie mouse, and something else... We just got parts for her, since we can get the actual potato for much much less at home, but we'll save this stuff for her birthday, and I think it'll be tons of fun to have parts that she can't get anywhere else. She also fell in love with a giant Fozzie doll. We didn't end up buying him but I thought it was really cute that she loved him so much. It made me think that sooner or later maybe we need to expose her to the muppets. :o)
Thursday morning, we woke up and headed to Denny's for breakfast. It was GREAT! After breakfast, L and I went back to the hotel and got more properly dressed and cleaned up a bit and decided to go back to the mall for a walk around. We actually went when the mall was open this time, so we stopped and played in pottery barn kids, which is as good as any playground for L and then I decided to take her to Monkey Joe's for a little more room for entertainment.
Monkey Joe's is a bounce house with slides and other giant moon bounce things. I didn't know how much L would really like it (just because she's a little young), but I thought it would give her an opportunity to run and I knew she needed it.
I helped her into the first moon bounce and she looked at me like, "what is this crazy place?"
It didn't take her long to find her feet.
The thing she liked the best was running around and playing with the video games even though she wasn't actually playing.
She was also interested in this crazy game. I have no idea what it is supposed to do, but L liked it.
Our idea in going back to Sea World was to ride some of the rides they have for kids and to see Shamu. We'd heard that the show was great, but I was skeptical as to whether or not L would actually sit and watch the show. The show started at 6:00 according to the website and we got there right around 6:00, but... the show didn't actually start until 6:30! Woohoo! We took the opportunity to head to the kid's play area because we knew L would never make it if we sat and waited for the show to begin.
When we went into the kid's area we saw the water play. I thought it would be fun for L. She loves the water. At first, she was so nervous and would not get close, but after I started to play, she warmed up a little.
It took a little convincing:
...but she reached out a little...
...and finally touched the water and was sort of surprised...
...but as soon as she got her first taste of that water, we couldn't pull her away. She was having so much fun!
She never did get directly in the water, but she was soaked anyhow. I had thought to bring a change of clothes (thank goodness) so we changed her and headed to Shamu Stadium to watch the show.
I was still nervous. If there is one thing that people always notice about L, it's that she's a very busy girl. She doesn't sit still, she's just constantly in motion. It's makes for a very cute baby girl, but it doesn't always translate well into sitting well in shows.
She struggled to get out from where we were sitting and worked hard to get past one of us to get to the aisle until this happened:
and she was hooked. She loved watching the "fish." Whenever one of the whales would appear she'd sign and say fish. It was very cute.
The show was really awesome. L loved it and we loved it too.
After the show was over we headed back to the kid's area so that L could ride some of the rides. Our camera battery died, so we didn't get many good photos, but she had a great time with her Daddy on some pretty scary rides! She's a daredevil though and loved every minute!
Friday we went to Aquatica, the water park. It was SO MUCH FUN! I wondered how much fun we'd have, but it was a blast. L had an incredible time playing in the kid's pool, the wave pool, the lazy river, the not so lazy river and on the slides. We stayed for four hours and we all felt like we had stayed for twelve. It was exhausting, but so worth it! I can't wait for the pool this summer, because it was so awesome to see her splashing around and enjoying herself so much! She was grinning ear to ear nearly the entire time. Now... she did not like the slides as much. The water was deep at the bottom of the slide, so she'd go underwater, and not knowing how to hold her breath... she didn't like that, but everything else was great!
We went out to eat Friday night at a great local Mexican restaurant (with a live Mariachi band!) and turned in semi-early.
Saturday L was up early! She woke us up (as she did every morning in Orlando) with a hi! and we got around and went to Denny's for breakfast. We wasted as much time as we possibly could and around 9:30 we headed to the Magic Kingdom for our big day in Disney World.
You park way out, ride a tram to the ticket booths and then ride either a boat or the monorail to get into the actual park.
This is a view of Cinderella's castle from the ticket station.
We took a couple of minutes to take photos just inside the gate.
When we got inside the park we let L out in the rose garden. She had such a great time just running. She'd much rather be out of the stroller than in, and I can't say I blame her.
The first ride we stopped for was the Mad Tea Party. L loved riding with Brad and even got to talk to Alice.
She got done and we asked her if she liked it and she said, more!
Next we headed to Cinderella's Carousel.
Then we had some lunch and headed to "It's a Small World." I thought the boat ride might encourage some sleeping (ha ha!).
Then L really did fall asleep. We walked around a bit and let her sleep for around 30 minutes and then woke her up! We didn't want to miss anything! She was barely too short for one of the kiddo coasters, so instead we went next door to the little playground. It was a hit! She immediately found a stranger and tried to swipe her sunglasses, but got distracted by playing.
She enjoyed looking in this little house, but did not want to go in. She doesn't seem to like tunnels or going in places like that house. We'll see how that plays out as she grows, but that's alright, I don't much like those things either!
We also saw the train come into the station. L LOVES trains and it stopped her in her tracks.
After we'd watched the choo choo, we visited Mickey's house. He wasn't there, of course, but we checked out his things.
We could have met Mickey in the Judge's Hall next to his house, but the wait was around 30 minutes and we just didn't want to wait.
We then headed over to the Speedway.
Brad drove and L rode. She learned how to say, "vroom, vroom" in line! L loves cars and gets so excited seeing them, so it was really a great ride for her.
They had so much fun.
We got done and asked her what she wanted to do next and she said this:
That's L's sign for drink, so we got some water and decided to head over to check out the parade and take a little rest. I wasn't sure what exactly to expect from a Disney parade. We've not seen a parade before, and I knew there would be characters, but she's so easy going I wasn't worried about her being afraid of them. I just wasn't sure if she'd enjoy the parade.
We had PERFECT viewing spots. L was hanging in her stroller and I sat down beside her. It was fantastic and then the parade started.
It was so loud, but L loved it and when Mickey made an appearance she went crazy. As far as I know she doesn't even know who Mickey is really, but she was waving and pointing and so excited to see him.
She liked the rest of the characters in the parade, but not nearly as much as she liked Mickey.
L even loved the villains. She waved and waved at them.
Brad thought the driver was hilarious. Doesn't he know that we're in the happiest place on earth?
Of course, we saw lots of princesses and their princes and thought of our friend C.
We thought it was so funny that the princesses had their own secret service.
...and of course we saw the traditional disney characters that we remember from our childhood.
It was a good way to take a break for sure! After that we rode a couple of other rides, and then finally made our way to Dumbo.
We had a while to wait in line and L decided that she'd had it with her hat. She wasn't going to wear it any longer.
There was this little knob inside the elephant. I really didn't want her to touch it, because I'm just nervous on rides and I didn't want to know what it did, but she was all over that knob.
Soon enough the ride started and she was distracted from that knob!
When it was done we were all tired and decided that maybe it was time to go. Our flight left at 9:20, and we had planned on leaving around 6:00. We ended up leaving around 5:00 and we decided that 7 hours at Disney was enough.
We decided to ride the train to the front of the park. We waited in line for a little while to board, but we were happy to just stand and wait.
Finally the train arrived and we boarded to leave the park.
We rode the monorail and got back to our car and headed to the airport. Our plan was to buy a carseat for Lily for the plane ride home, but didn't. Luckily L had an easy time sleeping on the plane and our ride home was easy.
All in all it was a truly wonderful trip. We had an incredible time and made many memories. Now if I could just get the luggage put away...
:o) See you next week.
(oh, I shoudl also tell you that L has learned to say no this weekend. She used to say, "doh!" but is now saying, no no. It's a little cute, and a little exasperating. Imagine, L can you come here please? No no. L can we get your shoes on? No no. ...)
