Florida adventures part 1

Where to start? Let me try to summarize our trip first... wonderful overall, with a good balance of plain 'ol relaxing and outings, to places like the zoo, aquarium, the emergency room, a Twins game, etc. Yes, the emergency room. Perhaps I should start at the beginning!

As you may or may not know, we went on this trip primarily because my parents rented a house for the month and generously invited us down to join them. Here's a picture of our accommodations:
Ok, maybe not. That's actually a picture of one of the many fantastic homes along Sarasota Bay, which we got to view on our boat tour. Here's where we actually stayed (and yes, that's grandpa getting "bronze"):
Our little cottage worked well for us, especially because of the location. To give you an idea, here's what we saw when we stood directly in front of the house - the views to the left and the right:

Yep - we were right on the beach! Location, location, location!

The first two days we were there, it was cold. No, not Minnesota-cold, it was 60 degrees (it snowed in Atlanta!). Which would have felt downright balmy to us, if it wasn't for the brisk wind blowing off the gulf. As you can see, we still got outside, but look at Zach's red cheeks!

We also checked out a local state park, which was a little nature walk through some mangroves. At the top we found some great views of the boats in the intercoastal waterways.

As some of you already know - I love taking pictures of sunsets. I'll try not to bore you too much by including the many many sunset pictures I took, but I do like this one, which is from the first night:
That night things got interesting. Zach is an incredibly adaptable kid, especially when it comes to sleeping. He will sleep anywhere - a strange place in a strange bed, doesn't matter. So when he had a hard time going to bed that night, we knew something was up. We had noticed that he seemed to have trouble getting his ears to pop when the plane was landing (as did I), but he seemed ok so we weren't terribly concerned.

But after he went to bed, he was up 20 minutes later. I cuddled him a bit and then asked if he was ready to go back to bed, assuming that he just wasn't settled down yet since he'd taken a long nap and it probably seemed a little early for bedtime - we were trying to adjust to eastern time! Anyway, he said he was ready to get back in bed, and did. But the pattern continued, he was up every 20 to 30 minutes, and as the night went on, he started crying and screaming, and soon was inconsolable. It was scary, frankly, since he was not acting like himself. He'd sleep for a while if I held him upright, but even that didn't last long. So Scott went out on the porch to "borrow" someone's wireless connection, we found a nearby emergency room and off we went.

The ER at midnight is an, uh, interesting place. Creepy, quite frankly, and made creepier by the fact that "The Sixth Sense" was playing on the tv. We got to spend an hour and a half waiting, staring at that movie and people-watching... creepy. Zach was clearly exhausted but wouldn't fall asleep. At one point he pushed himself off my lap and started heading for the door. We asked where he was going, and he said "I am going home to see Koskie." It was one of those moments that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Laugh because he looked so cute padding determinedly across the room in his footed pjs. Cry because he obviously just wanted the comforts of home and his dog, and we couldn't give it to him.

Long story short, we were back at the cottage by about 3 AM, with a soundly sleeping child who may or may not have a double ear infection, some antibiotics, and some children's ibuprofen. A lesson I won't forget - when traveling, check out ahead of time where the nearest hospital is, and bring along some pain meds even if your child rarely needs them at home. After all that drama, we were pretty surprised when Zach woke up bright and early, raring to go. You honestly would never have known he was screaming in pain the night before, and didn't get much sleep. He was back to his normal happy self. Whew.

We headed to the Sarasota Aquarium, where we got to see some manatees, dolphins, all sorts of odd fish, and the largest giant squid ever found - which looked disgusting preserved in a coffin-like tank. Oh, and the opportunity to pet some some stingy-rays... they're slimy, if you're wondering. Zach is pretty fascinated with fish (more on that later), so it was a good outing.

More to come... wow, I took a lot of pictures!