Meo sees Whales: Our Mini Vacation

A couple weekends ago, Robbie had a conference in Massachusetts he wanted to go to for work. His company was nice enough to book us a hotel room with a king sized bed and free breakfast, so Meo and I were able to join him free of charge. They paid for gas and Robbie's meals as well, so we had very little pay for which was the only way we could afford to go on a little "baby moon" as one might call it.

And this is how he insisted on sleeping every night we spent in the hotel

Day 1

Robbie was quite busy with the conference the entire weekend, so mostly the vacation was Meo and I hanging out and exploring. All summer I had really wanted to take Meo to see whales someplace, as he really loves whales and wants to read and sing about them all the time. You may even recall that his second birthday party was whale themed. Well, there is an aquarium in Mystic Connecticut that I was training to be a docent at when I was attending Connecticut College back in the day that has several Beluga Whales. I remember how much I enjoyed patting the whales big squishy tongues, and much peace I found watching them swim while I listened to Moby's "Porcelain" on loop on particularly lonesome afternoons. I knew Meo would love to see these whales, but from our house it is a four hour drive in one direction. So when I found out we we be driving two hours to Massachusetts, my first thought was maybe I could make a day trip to bring Meo to see the whales. So Friday morning, that's just what we did.

The Mystic Aquarium has lots of other exhibits besides whales. They have lots of fish, including sharks and colorful chiclids, they have turtles, rays, a touch tank and more. We spent a little time looking around this part of the aquarium first as it was close to lunch time and I wanted Meo to be fed and happy before we saw the whales.

Holding a starfish

We even put on some 3D glasses and watched a 10 minute segment of Planet Earth in 4D (they spray water at you and you feel earthquakes and stuff; its pretty fun).

Silly face at lunch

But certainly the high point of our day was visiting the beluga whales. Meo absolutely loved them! I was a teensy bit concerned that he would find them intimidating, as they are quite impressive to behold, but Meo was instantly entranced. In fact, it is probably the most excited I have ever seen him. He thought everything the whales did was amazing and couldn't stop shouldn't things like "Wow!", "That's a BIG one!", "Whale is swimming with tail!" and "WHOA!" while pressing himself up to the glass, jumping up and down and running back and forth with the whales.

It was certainly worth the trip and the money just to see how much Meo loved the whales alone! But there were a couple other parts of the aquarium that Meo really enjoyed as well. One was walking along the boardwalk that went through a wetland exhibit. Meo saw things like wetland birds, turtles, frogs, and beautiful waterlilies.

The other exhibit he really enjoyed was called "birds down under", and it was a little building you could walk into and freely interact with/feed lots of tropical birds. Meo was too nervous to hold the stick with millet himself and try to feed the birds, but he enjoyed watching me feed them and he got really excited when they flew close to us. He was full of giggles, it was great!

Meo had so much fun at the aquarium that we actually were able to stay a lot longer than I anticipated. We were both really tired when it was time to go. I got Meo a beluga whale toy and a book about beluga whales from the gift shop because I couldn't resist, and by the time I was ready to drive out of the parking lot he was already fast asleep with his whale.

Giving his whale a kiss

Sound asleep

Two hours later we arrived back at the hotel. Robbie was having a full day at the conference, so he wasn't even going to be able to join us for dinner. So this very tired Mama brought Meo up to the hotel room to drop stuff off. On the way, I asked Meo what his whale's name was and he said "Fat Tail!". This is the first time he ever gave a toy a name, and it was quite endearing. Actually, I had never heard him use the word "fat" before either. When we got to the hotel room, I couldn't get the stupid door to open. I was so tired I ended up just sitting on the floor defeated, trying to contact Robbie to come help us out. In the meantime, Meo took the keycard and said "I try open door Mama" and made a valiant effort to let us in.

Eventually I got it open, and we went down to the restaurant to have some dinner. Meo was not in the mood to sit in a high chair at a fancy restaurant and eat unfamiliar foods, so he was really whiny. Eventually the whining turned to crying and screeching, and I had to ask the waitress to pack up our food after I only ate a few bits of my meal so that we could head back up to the hotel room to eat.

Robbie got back to the room just after Meo had his bath, and was able to read him his new whale book before we went to bed.

Day 2

On the second day, Meo and I spent a lot of time outside enjoying the last whips of summer. We went to a place called The Garden in the Woods. This garden is part of the New England Flower Society, and it features native New England plants. I was particularly interested in this garden because I am looking for inspiration for our own yard (when we have enough money so I am actually allowed to buy plants/seeds).

An alternate type of grass to plant in the lawn

One of our favorite spots in the garden was the wetland garden that surrounded a little pond. Meo loved helping me spot all the frogs and turtles!

Our other favorite spot was the little family garden. They built all kinds of cool little things to walk through, crawl through, build with and explore including a spiral with living walls, and a honeycomb structure to fill with little natural art installations.

We had a really nice time just leisurely strolling through the garden and exploring, and I came out with lots of cool ideas for our own house.

Cat we found in the garden that allowed Meo to follow it around for a while before disappearing into the meadow

Stegosaurus sculpture

I love this idea for a compost area

After our adventure in the garden, we found a little spot for lunch where we enjoyed grilled cheese, french fries and baseball. We don't watch sports at our house, so I was a little surprised when Meo got SO EXCITED about everything that was happening on the Red Sox game.

There was a nearby farm we planned on visiting next that had things like a corn maze, animals, and supposedly pick-your-own pumpkins. When we got there though it was not the best. The corn maze cost a lot of money, all the vegetables were WAY overpriced and looked like they would be rotting the next day (some of them were already!), and for animals there were a couple of sheep out back where you weren't really supposed to walk, and a couple horses being boarded across the street who looked malnourished.

Meo checking out some rotting pumpkins and overpriced mums

I was not impressed, and it made me feel homesick. When we got back to the hotel (after Meo napped in the car), we convinced Robbie to skip his last talk and go swimming with us in the hotel pool. That ended up being a lot of fun and it made me excited about starting swimming lessons for Meo again. I really enjoyed the freedom of swimming laps in the big pool and it felt good to stretch my muscles. I loved swimming when I was pregnant with Meo, I wish I was able to find the time and/or money to swim during this pregnancy.

Post swimming; my little toweled man

Day 3

By this time I was pretty exhausted. I wanted to take Meo to the nearby zoo, or to the Boston Children's museum, but we didn't want to spend any more money. So I was having trouble coming up with free activities that weren't overly exhausting, because I was ready to sleep all day to be honest. Plus we had to check out of the hotel by a certain time so Meo and I had to become nomads while Robbie finished up his conference. We ended up hanging out in the hotel room after breakfast while Robbie went to his first talk so he could come back and help us pack up the car before Meo and I headed out into the world. We enjoyed snuggling and watching "Peep and the Big Wide World" lazily while we waited.

Snuggling with baby Link

Meo couldn't believe I got him a chocolate chip muffin

I ended up decided to take Meo to a nearby Callahan State Park for a walk. It was another gorgeous end of the summer day, and we enjoyed seeing all the dogs (I think we saw about 100 or more in the 2 hours we were there), corn fields, stream, and running along the paths.

After our romp through the park, we picked Robbie up from the hotel and we all went out for pizza before heading out on our long journey home. Meo enjoyed rolling around and running through the grass one more time before a two hour car nap.

I had a very fun vacation with my boys!