Cheerio Triumph

Addie and I just kicked back tonight and dug into a box of Cheerios together. She successfully ate five Cheerios all by herself. This is big news! The last time I tried to feed her a Cheerio (which was about a month ago) she choked on it. She then had the idea that things like that are not supposed to go in your mouth. She'd look at us like we were crazy trying to feed her chunks of banana and cooked carrots. We kept giving them to her anyway, which eventually just led to slobbery bits of mangled food on the floor and none in her belly. But tonight she was feeling gutsy, I could see it in her eyes. She worked long and hard to get each and every one of those Cheerios in her mouth. I take for granted how easily and quickly I can feed myself. With little effort and thought I can cram hundreds of Cheerios into my mouth in a matter of moments (not to brag or anything). It took Addie an hour of constant concentration to get her chubby little fingers to line up enough with her mouth to eat those five Cheerios. She'd clutch the Cheerio tight in her pudgy fist then shove her whole hand into her mouth and chew. In a tragic case of irony, the very hand that aided her in obtaining the Cheerio turned against her and prevented the morsel from actually entering her mouth. Oh what a battle it was! But alas, with nine soggy Cheerios on the floor, two stuck on her pants and one smeared across her tray, victory was finally hers.

Florida

This is how our lovely week in Florida all went down:

Addie at the airport, waiting to board the plane to fun. She was a pretty good traveler...no fussing, just playing and sleeping. We watched Beverley Hills Chihuahua, quite possibly the dumbest movie I've ever seen. Its so dumb they have to show it on airplanes where people can't leave once it comes on.

We finally made it to Florida. Now, where are we going? Pete, a family friend, came along with us and fortunately is very familiar with Florida since he lived there for two years. We were ready to get the party started! When we felt the Florida air for the first time it was COLD. I felt tricked. The next day and every day after that was perfectly warm, though.

Our first morning there we woke up, hopped in the car (still wearing pajamas), and went to Walmart. Yes! This is the way to start a vacation! We were staying in a condo that had a full kitchen, so we thought it would be smart to put some food in it. Addie enjoyed the shopping experience and was entertained by all the packages and the hot pink baggage claim ticket. At least someone enjoyed Walmart.

Boo-yah Beaches! This is at Sanibel Beach. Jason says beaches are icky and couldn't care less if we never went to one. This is Addie's first time at a real beach (The Great Salt Lake hardly counts). She liked the waves and the sand, but she'd cry if you dipped her toes in the water. In her defense, it was cold.

We went to R.C. Otter's while on Sanibel Island and had Gator Bites. Yep, actual alligator tail. It tastes just like chicken. This is a photo of Jason gator-biting a gator bite. Its the only way to eat one, really.

Addie had mangoes for the first time on this trip and loved them! I've never seen her eat so much of anything in one sitting! She's a piranha for mangoes.

This was the first of many alligators we saw on our vacation. It was the only one that we held, though. You can see the glee in Jason's face. The only thing he wanted to do on this vacation was see an alligator. He purposely wore that green shirt in the hopes that it would attract alligators. I'm not kidding either. Apparently it worked, although we later learned that alligators are in fact black, not green.

This is at Corkscrew Swamp (the photo above and the next two photos below are at Corkscrew, too). We saw many birds, a pair of dead frog legs, swampy plants and some alligators.

I really liked these Cyprus "knees" as they're called. They grow up from the roots of the Cyprus tree to help anchor it against hurricanes. Animals chew on them, plants grow on them, and they kind of look like groups of little hooded and gnarled people. What's not to love?

We watched this awesome creature glide through the water, upsetting wood storks and searching for fish, for nearly forty minutes..or until the old Swamp Nazi showed up and marched us, young and old alike, at top speeds about a half mile towards the front gate. If you stopped to tie your shoe or perform CPR you were either whipped or tossed into the swamp for a gator snack. Or both. Sometimes repeatedly. So maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but she was scary and mean and she really did make us speed-march and yell at us to go faster. Kind of surprising for how small and old she was. And I actually think an old couple may have gotten locked in there because they stopped to look at birds through their binoculars instead of getting through the gate. And I'm really not kidding about that, either. The image of them haunts me even now.

This is Ave Maria Cathedral. The story behind it is kind of long, but here it is: It's built on protected land (it was pretty near Corkscrew) and they got permission to build it, along with numerous homes and a school, through a loop-hole clause saying that only churches and schools could be built on it; however, another loop-hole clause states that x number of homes can be built in ratio to the size of the church. So, they built a HUGE cathedral so they could put in a lot of homes. And then they put in a school so they could build even more. Its in the middle of no where and is basically a catholic community. It was eerie and cool. There were nuns walking around and even having some coffee in a coffee shop near this church. We went inside the cathedral and quietly peeked inside the confessionals and holy water containers. It was cool.

Earlier this same day we went to Immokolee, a little town full of really poor people. We drove down one street lined with little mobile homes, clothes lines and latino pedestrians/ residents. Then we turned the corner and everyone was Haitian. It was quite a cultural experience. We felt a little bit dumb being white and cruising by in a red Mustang where most people only had bikes to get around. Buses come into the town every work day to pick people up and take them to Naples (a really ritzy/ expensive town) to work. We went to Naples, too. The social shift between those towns was staggering.

At the beach in Naples. This was a really nice, clean beach full of really old and disgustingly tan and rich people. I built a sand fort for Addie to sit in and play with her little beach ball and suck on shells while we played frisbee. There were a lot of pelicans hanging around. It was awesome to watch a group of four or five pelicans fly just above the water and then PLUNK head first into the water after some fish. In unison, too.

This is the Mustang I mentioned earlier. This turned out to be our rental car for the week, and it was fun. I'm pretty sure the tires were bald by the time we returned it. We cruised around with the windows down and the 80's rock turned up, passing by orange groves and beaches and eating weird Mexican crackers from the cultural isle at Walmart. I know that was a run-on sentence, but it was a necessary one. This picture was taken in front of Steven Spielberg's house, and I'm not kidding. I swiped a shell off his beach.

We drove on down to Everglade City to hop a ride on Totch's Airboat. It was pretty cool cruising through the mangrove tunnels in a foot of dirty swamp water. It was even more fun getting stuck. Our guide kept saying, "I don't know, folks. We might git stuck, an' we might not. The ladies've agreed to push though, right? I don't know if we're gonna make it, but I'd like t'give it a try." I think we all thought he was just joking and putting on a show...but we were wrong. We were sitting there for about twenty minutes. Every few minutes he'd tell us to all rock while he started up the boat to see if we could get unlodged from the mud bank we were on. "Well folks, we got one thing goin' for us. The tide's a'risin'. " Even while we were stuck, J and I thought maybe he was still kidding, he just had that kind of personality. Taking this picture was just one of the things we did while waiting for the tide to rise. Once we got out he said, "Well, I thought we might'a gotten stuck, but I likes t' do it an' people likes t' see it." We didn't see any wildlife save for one white bird.

This is the smallest Post Office in the United States. When the original Ochopee Post Office burned down in 1953 the town quickly put this 7x8-foot shed (it used to be an irrigation pipe shed for a tomato farm) into service. They never bothered to build another one, so this one is still in use. Ochopee only has a population of 11 anyway, so I think it's big enough to hold all the mail they send and receive. This town was right on the edge of the Everglades.

Just a friendly gathering of turtles on a swamp log.

This a large rubber tree on the Ford-Edison Estate. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were good ol' pals and summered together in Fort Myers along the Caloosahatchee River. They were in cahoots together to discover a source for rubber that could be cultivated here in the U.S. This was just after WWII and so it seemed a good idea to become as independent of a nation as possible. They spent ten years researching different plants (the tree above included) and never found anything successful enough to run with. Or drive with.

I like to call this tree the Grand Banyan. It's also on the Ford-Edison Estate. It takes up more than an acre! The branches send down roots wherever it needs more support and just keeps spreading. This type of tree is also called a "walking tree". Jason is learning about it on his audio tour guide device.

I am not having a smoke. I am actually thinking of inventions in the very spot where Thomas Edison would sit and think sometimes. I thought sitting there would cause me to have some Edisonic thoughts, but I just had my usual regular thoughts ("I'm hungry. Did I put on deodorant today? I wonder if a manatee will leap out of the water right now and flap a friendly 'hello' with its flipper while also singing 'so long, and thanks for all the fish' ?")

Addie pooped only once on this whole trip and this was it. We were on Fort Myers Beach and then we noticed to little puddles seeping out from between Addie's rolls. And I don't mean dinner rolls. This began an exciting ten minute public show that included rinsing poopy clothes in the ocean, nude sunbathing and burying incriminating evidence.

This is still Fort Myers Beach but after a diaper and clothing change. Jason and Addie politely modeled next to my Sand-Witch for this photo.

We went to Steak 'n Shake for dinner after beachin' it up. Our little fry tried her first fry (cannibalism?) which might be a little like letting your child taste poison considering the child obesity rate in this country. But heck, we were on vacation! I fell in love with malts all over again at this place. I guess you could say it "malted" my heart.

I really wanted to see a manatee on this trip and kept a keen eye out for them the entire time. I spotted some manatee mailboxes, a manatee skeleton, and these little manatees in a gift shop. But no real or living manatees. So I had J take a picture of me and this guy (I named him Hugh Manatee) since it was the closest I was ever going to get to one on this trip. I'm a little embarassed in this photo because the store employee is watching me and I'm not even planning on buying it. Nope, just take my picture with it like it's a normal thing to do.

Jason and I, being the thrifty folk we are, decided to eat all the food that we stocked the condo with on the day we left. J was munching down on the above bowl of cereal when he froze halfway through and just stared into his bowl. I asked him a series of questions, "What's wrong? Is it gross? Is the milk bad? Is there a bug in it?", all to which he shook his head. "No, there are bugs in it." I looked in and saw ants scrambling over flakes and floating in milk, trying to make sense of the worst disaster to ever hit their community. I don't know how many Jason ate, but there were still at least ten in the bowl when he stopped eating. Needless to say, he was done with breakfast.

After a week of bliss, it was time to return our steel devil on wheels and board the plane to home. Addie couldn't get enough of the view out of the plane window, despite the repeated bonks of her face on the pane. We were exhausted but happy to be home. Vacations are great, but it's nice to get home to your own bed and your own dirt.