Barbara Manatee

With a long trip to pick up my friend, Katie and her girls, Nina and Adela, in Gainesville and then continue on to Homosassa Springs to see manatees, I felt it was time to get Isabelle's new forward facing car seat. The brief moments I had a chance to look back at her sure made me smile. She was in pure awe for thirty minutes not even touching the toy I set in her lap. Yes, I took a picture while driving when there was no traffic. No, I wasn't looking back when I did it but sure took a great blind picture! Her pacifier is in because I was really hoping that she would nap on the way there. Rather silly of me when you think about the new things she was seeing. We had an early wake up at 7 which is quite different from our normal mornings of sleeping in until 9:30 at the earliest. Your jealousy of us sleeping in would not reflect in her bedtime especially as of late.

Once in Gainesville, we comfortably filled the car with additional riders. I love our vehicle for many reasons but especially the DVD player. The girls enjoyed watching Backyardigans which I have not personally ever watched but the music was entertaining from the front seat. I'm sure they will be added to our collection of toddler movies soon. The girls also watched some Care Bear episodes, of course. I have officially left 6 Care Bear DVDs in the car each with multiple episodes to entertain Isabelle when nothing else seems to work.

We arrived at Homosassa Springs around lunch time though Isabelle had a hard time waiting that long with such an early breakfast. She had part of her lunch on the drive given to her occasionally by me from the front passenger seat. As a parent, sometimes you've got to do what you've got to do even if you could be ticketed. In fairness, I told Katie I would pay for any ticket but we didn't get one.

My friend, Bonnie, and her kids, Hannah and Samuel, were able to meet us there. Since they live near Tampa, Homosassa is about half way from Gainesville. I became friends with Bonnie while in Virginia and knew Hannah as a toddler. It was nice to finally meet Samuel and see in person how they both had grown. We all enjoyed a picnic lunch and the kids had a ball interacting and then running around while we cleaned up. Katie managed to snap a picture of them sitting in the grass. From left to right: Adela, Isabelle, Hannah, Nina, and Samuel. We took a boat ride over to the park which frankly bored Isabelle as she couldn't get down from my lap or she would have walked right off the edge. We were informed that the water was only 3 feet deep so no urgent need to wear life jackets. The bottom left picture was on the ride over when Isabelle saw some ducks.In the other pictures above: top right is the girls looking at all the different birds, center is Isabelle's expression from looking at the birds, center right is Katie and me (sorry Bonnie, our picture was too blurry so we'll have to retake one another time), bottom center is Isabelle and Hannah seeing more ducks, bottom right is all the youngsters by the manatee fountain.

Someone had informed Katie that there were hundreds of manatees there at this time of year. We went to the underwater observatory to see them up close. Unfortunately, we missed them. A park volunteer told us that they came into the spring in the evening. But the underwater observatory was still quite entertaining with the multitude of fish. Some were extremely large and others were traveling in schools. Of course, we needed pictures of all the kids in the manatee.
Our trip wasn't a bust with the absence of the wild manatees. There were some manatees that are there due to health issues so we did get to see a few in another area. The whole park also was a mini zoo with other native Florida wildlife including black bears, bobcats, white-tailed deer, American alligators, American crocodiles, river otters, and lots of birds to name some. We wound through boardwalks that made it convenient to let the kids walk freely most of the time. The kids really enjoyed that and were instant buddies as the hand holding picture portrays. Though not native to Florida, one of the best animals was the Hippo. At first we only saw him laying around, but when we came by on our way out of the park he was swimming and playing. It was exciting to see him open his mouth and actually snap a picture too!
We took family pictures on the way out. Not the best idea since Isabelle decided that was the perfect time to finally start her nap. After a little browsing in the gift shop, Isabelle now has a small stuffed manatee and Hippo magnet to play with. The tram back to our cars took a while to pick us up so at least Isabelle got about 40 minutes of a nap. Nina was the only napper in our vehicle on the way back to Gainesville though I'm sure all the mommas were ready for a nap after much chasing that day.