the one with all the manatees

We had a wonderful, relaxing trip to the beach last week! It was Millie's third year going to Cocoa Beach with us, and each year gets more and more fun! 

Ever since we took our mini-vacation to Cape San Blas in April, Millie has been BEGGING to go back to the beach. Parenting pro tip: maybe don't tell your distraught daughter about your next beach trip while you are leaving from your current beach trip if there is more than about 2 days until the next one. "In July" meant NOTHING to Millie, and so it's been a lonnnng three months of telling her "not today!!" every day when she thinks we are going to the beach that day.

See the line where the sky meets the sea? It calls me...and no one knoooooows how far it gooooooes...

But finally the day came and we got back to her beloved "BIG water!" and all was well with her soul. And mine. But then...

But then.

Then it was Thursday. Thursday, July 13, to be exact. A day I shall forever remember with fondness, joy, and delight.

On Thursday we decided to go kayaking. Same place we've gone before- the Banana River, less than a mile from our condo. The river is where my love of manatees was born back in 2010, when I unexpectedly came upon them while kayaking. I've been a woman obsessed ever since. But I've never had as much success finding them again. Occasional sightings, a glimpse from afar...enough to keep fueling my passion, but not enough to quench it, right? But I get it. It's July. It's hotter than Hades. It's not "manatee season," even though it's a manatee zone. So I keep my expectations low reasonable-ish.

But on Thursday...

OH MY GOSH THERE IS A MANATEE RIGHT NEXT TO MY KAYAK!!!

A manatee? There wasn't a manatee.

There were four.

Four giant, lovely, fat, happy, playful manatees. They were hanging out in a little cove, doing what manatees do. Rolling around, being adorable, and BE STILL MY HEART, curiously checking out the kayakers who happened by.

THIS IS MATT TOUCHING A MANATEE!!!!!!!!!

Like, they just came up to us! They KEPT coming up to us! The swam under us and rubbed their backs on the bottom of our boat! The stuck their noses up and sniffed us!!

I GOT TO PET A MANATEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I cannot even describe this.

Over and over and over, they came up, rolled around, said hi (with their bodies. I speak the body language of the manatees, trust.).

Millie's sweet little hand got to PET A MANATEE!! She was so brave!!

Indescribable, people. Absolutely amazing. I have videos (and videos, and videos) of the whole experience and my voice is like 12 octaves higher than strictly necessary and I am gushing and nearly sobbing and like OH MY GOSH I WAS BEING SWARMED BY HAPPY, ROLY POLY MANATEES!!!

They have whiskers!! Or "beards," if you're Millie.

They showed off with cute party tricks like this!

Oh look, it's Erika tanning on the beach a manatee tanning in the water! (P.S. I touched their bellies too, don't worry. They were much smoother than their backs and didn't have all the algae/barnacles. Very interesting!)

We stayed in that cove and just watched and played for over half an hour. They never left us- they kept swimming around us and coming up. I really just cannot believe it happened. I think I'm still in shock.

This is how we felt about the whole experience.

I am just so incredibly thankful for such an amazing, unexpected opportunity. That my parents, Matt, and Millie got to experience it alongside me was even better. You better believe none of us have stopped talking about it ever since. And now that we're home, with no upcoming beach trips on the agenda, Millie asks "when we see manatees again?" and like...what am I supposed to tell her?! At least I've got a co-manatee lover in the house with me.

July 13, man. July 13. You know, on the Tuesday and Wednesday before, I'd been sick with a stomach bug and stuck in bed (so stupid on vacation!!). But on Thursday, I woke up, felt a bit better, and figured we may as well go for a paddle down the river. What a wonderful spur-of-the-moment decision THAT turned out to be!!!

summer fun

Well, the summer keeps on trucking along. It's hot. It's humid. It's inexplicably raining and storming nearly EVERY day. But we're having a lot of fun! For example, thanks to the frequent storms (and fireworks...), Lola is getting a lot of opportunities to wear her ThunderShirt. Millie knows this, and knows that Lola gets scared of the storms, and this has resulted in two very funny things.

1. At the first sign (or sound) of a storm, Millie will frantically tell us "Lola needs her BOOM BLANKET!" ThunderShirt...Boom Blanket...I get it. Obviously now we call it the boom blanket all the time, because that's a way better name. If anyone is thinking about starting a company to make knockoff ThunderShirts, you are welcome to use this superior name for your product.

2. Several times when it's been storming at night, we've closed the door to Millie's room while we're putting her to bed and Lola will scratch at the door until we let her in. Therefore, for the past few days, at ALL times of the day, regardless of weather, Millie will stop, fold her hands, and pray for Lola: "Dear Jesus...we just thank you dat Lola NOT scwatch at my door. Pwease make Lola not scared and not scwatch my door. Thank you for her boom blanket. AMEN!"

Gimme all the storms if I get this kind of hilarious payoff. Also, Jesus, please help Lola not be scared and scratch on Millie's door, because apparently it really distresses Millie. ;)

And now, some random pictures and stories. 

We're heading to the beach next week (YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!) and needed to practice setting up (easy) and taking down (what the *@#!) our beach tent. In between those two events, Millie found it to be a good place to have some reading time. It should be noted that Millie has almost completed her second library summer reading program of the summer (you know, read 50 books and get prizes sorta thing). They are going to have to name a shelf of books after us or something by the time summer is through! LOTS of reading going on in our house!

The Big Girl Bed situation is going great!! She is sleeping well and only getting/falling out of bed occasionally in the wee hours...when that happens she tends to seem very confused and discombobulated and goes right back to sleep without a problem, so I am thankful for that! When she does wake up, though, we are treated to alien-ish sights like this as she helpfully goes over to turn off her sound machine.

We played dress-up one afternoon. She apparently thinks princesses have attitudes or something.

WATERCOLORS, guys!! I've finally found the Holy Grail of toddler entertainment. Hours (literally) of fun that ISN'T MESSY!! We all win. She will paint contentedly and independently for a super long time, and then we make "books" (by stapling pages together)...it's the best. For whatever reason, she manages to keep pretty clean with these paints (her other paints end up EVERYWHERE and have to be used basically naked outside) and like...I'm about to hit those back to school sales at Target and STOCK UP on watercolors, yo. 

We had some fun firsts this past week!

First fireworks! See also: first intentionally keeping her out and awake WAY past her bedtime. Luckily she did fine!

Well, I mean, until about 10 minutes into the actual fireworks part, when she managed to fall asleep. Hahaha. Poor baby. Luckily for us all, once we actually got home and put her in bed (10:00, so a good 1.5 hours past her normal bedtime), she went right to sleep and even slept in the next morning...so...fireworks every weekend, right?

We also went to the movie theater for the first time!! Well, first time EVER for Millie...first time since Millie was born for us, haha.

A local theater does a "kids movie" thing every Tuesday/Thursday morning during the summer...older movies, but $1.50 tickets, $1.50 popcorn, and $1.50 drinks, so THAT is a win. We enjoyed watching The Secret Life of Pets, which was pretty cute, and Millie was SUPER into the whole theater experience. Possibly my favorite part was watching her deal with the theater chair. Hahahaha. She didn't quite weigh enough to keep it from springing back up into the closed position if she sat towards the back, so she would balance way up at the tip of the chair, but every time she forgot and scooted back, it would try to close her up...haaaa! Free entertainment there. For me, anyway.

All the rain has resulted in LOTS of tomatoes this year! On Monday we picked some and then took some across the street to our elderly neighbors, a practice that Millie found VERY confusing. "Why we give dem our matoes??! Dey hungry? Dey no have matoes?" Later she informed me that she missed the 'matoes' that we gave to our neighbors. Apparently those 20 matoes were her favorites and now they are GONE. Crazy baby!

Well, that about brings us up to speed. Congrats if you made it this far. Also, if you happen to be reading this ON my blog (and not through Bloglovin or something), you might notice that I got a new design! Thanks to an astute blog reader, Jackie, who yesterday pointed out that most of my design images (the header, about me, section labels on the right hand side) had gone WAY wonky and the images were gone and replaced with some ransom thing from Photobucket (where they had been hosted)...it was super weird and unattractive, haha. I couldn't figure out how to easily fix it without tracking down the girl that created the design for me 3.5 years ago, so I decided to just make a new one myself. It was an unexpected turn of events, and I certainly had no plans to redesign a blog I barely ever use, hahaha, but...it had to happen! Anyway, I'm happy with how it turned out and it even encouraged me to actually BLOG so that other people might see it, too. :) 

Happy Friday! And happy almost-vacation to meeee!! Counting the minutes til I see my sweet girl running through that sand!