NicholsSouth: Chattanooga Choo Choo and the Aquarium

We decided to hit up Chattanooga, TN this past weekend as Ryan had a three day weekend (Fri, Sat, and Sun...not Monday...booooo). We visited the Tennessee Aquarium. This was our first actual trip with Charley. The last time we "traveled" he was 3 months old so I don't really count that. We learned a lot about this little man on our overnight trip...such as, he is much more delightful when he's exhausted and passes out in the car. We waited to leave our house until after his afternoon nap (and once I had gotten off of work). He's used to playing a lot so we had to pull over outside of Scottsboro so he could stretch his legs. Once to the hotel, the Chattanooga Choo Choo, we scoured the grounds of this historic hotel. I didn't get ANY pictures while we were there. My bad. The camera was in the car and it was raining. We also kept forgetting to grab the keys so we could get it. Oh well. This is Charley on our way there. The beginning of the trip.

Charley almost towards the end. Reading about the VERY hungry caterpillar.

We brought our bathing suits in hopes of using the pool. We got to after we had eaten dinner and it had stopped raining. It was late but we wanted to get a swim in. The pool was 20deg below zero, I kid you not. This child did not want to leave the pool. His lips had turned purple and he was shivering and yet he fussed when Mama and Dad decided it was too cold. We had been in long enough and it was late. We have since decided to look into swimming lessons for him. We also found out that Charley does not like elevators. I had visited a friend in the hospital a couple of weeks ago (she had a baby) and he cried a little on the elevator going up and back down. I had assumed he was just tired. Apparently, he just doesn't like elevators and our room was on the fifth floor. Lord help us if there was a stop between the ground floor and our floor. It wasn't BAD, he just cried. I'm really bummed I didn't get any pictures but the whole hotel experience was different. Having a crib in the same room as us was different. He's not the sort of kid that's just going to fall asleep especially if there was other things going on. So, we laid him down and we closed ourselves in the bathroom. We showered, got ready for bed. By that time, he had fallen asleep. We didn't sleep all that well, probably because we were afraid to move thinking it was going to wake him up. We all woke up at 7:30am, got ready, went to breakfast where he entertained a couple next to us the ENTIRE time. Played a little in the gardens, went back to the room for a nap where...I had forgotten to hang the "Do Not Disturb" sign and housekeeping in our building were the loudest folks I've ever had the joy of experiencing. Needless to say, we got a 20 minute nap and decided to be on our way to the aquarium. A couple of pictures as we were leaving the premises...

The aquarium adventure begins.

He loved the turtles...

On our way to lunch.

The Tennessee River. Next time, assuming there is a next time, we'll get to do the river journey. Charley wasn't big enough this time and I didn't want to be on a boat for 2 hours with him. :)

He was trying to pet the sting rays but they were at the bottom of the pool so he was having fun just playing in the water.

And the Butterfly garden was AWESOME. I think that was my favorite. We had to continually move because we were worried he'd grab ahold of a butterfly and crush them. He's not the most gentle toddler.