Archive for April, 2010
Hairstylist, maybe?
Or maybe not if the aggrieved look on her Grandpa’s face is anything to go by.
36 month stats:
Height – 35.5 inches
Weight – 26.2 pounds
Head Circumference – dunno, J took her and he forgot to write it down
According to J the visit went well. There, now you know essentially what I know about it. He’s not one to focus on the details, you see.
Well, it was good except for this part.
Apparently this wasn’t all that much fun but it does get her completely up to date on all of her vaccinations. We vax’ed on a delayed schedule and the MMR was the last one we needed to complete. Took a little longer but we’re finally there!
It said everything was included in the super-duper, easy to make Bunny cookie house kit.
Apparently they forgot to mention that decorating experience and/or talent might be needed.
Along with the vats of cleaning solution required to get sugar icing off of the table, the floor, the clothes, and the kid…
I don’t think we’ll be tacking this project again anytime soon.
Trip #1 with Ava (10 months old) was hell. Pure hell. It’s not that she was so bad – although there were more crying incidents than I care to remember – but 20+ hours of travel time from China -> Japan -> Chicago -> Home will do that to anybody. 3 layovers, mean TSA agents, horrible weather…we had it all. Thankfully we had purchased her own seat. It would have been unbearable if we hadn’t.
Trip #2 with Ava (1 year old) was more like purgatory. Since it was only a short flight with no layovers we didn’t think it necessary to buy her a seat. Bless the grandpa who was seated in our row for his patience and kindness to two very frazzled parents after being stuck on the tarmac for 45 minutes before taking off for our departure flight and thanks be that she fell right asleep (after soaking through her diaper leaving me with an unfortunate smell) on our return.
Trip #3 with Ava (2 years old) was a pleasure. She had her own seat and her own travel carseat, we had a backpack full of treats (that she rarely used), and we booked flights with her regular nap and sleep times in mind. Gah – apparently it was us all along that just needed to get it right for her.
Like letting her use the Sky Club since we had a loooonng layover in Atlanta after taking the red-eye from the West Coast:
What a difference a quick nap away from the general hubbub of the airport can make. Not to mention the free breakfast, wi-fi, clean bathrooms, and customer service from people who seem truly happy to help you.
The one disappointment I have with air travel in general lately is the trend toward not allowing people with small children to pre-board. Even before kids I never, ever minded letting families on first because clearly they had way more stuff and people to maneuver but it seems like that practice is now a thing of the past. I had to argue with every single gate agent – seriously, every one – for J to be allowed to pre-board in order to get the car seat installed. I finally told the mean Delta lady in San Diego that I would be more than happy to be the last one on the plane as long as she didn’t mind us knocking every single person we walked by in the head with the honking big car seat we were carrying. Ultimately she saw the logic in my way of thinking and waved us in just before opening the gates to the herd.
Overall – work/vacation to the West Coast was an overwhelming success but, as always, it was so good to finally be home.
Disneyland or Legoland? Legoland or Disneyland? What to do with our last full day in San Diego before taking the redeye home sweet home?
Well, with the assistance of M3, who kindly answered some questions for me via email, we ultimately decided on Legoland since we did Disneyworld last year and plan on visiting again this year.
LL was a relatively short drive up the coast and we made it in plenty of time to get ourselves lost in the employee parking lot while listening to J’s new GPS steer us wrong over and over again. We finally made it to the right place, parked in BFE, and schlepped our way in – still managing to forget half the things I’d brought (snacks, clothing, etc) for Ava. J was overcome with excitement as soon as he got a glimpse of the entryway. And the first picture he took in the park?
Was of the store. I kid you not.
There were lots of legos in the store. (Shocking, I know.) I’m certain we looked at every single one of them.
Ava was quite taken with the elephant
until it did this
at which point she flipped out. Screaming loudly and doing her level best to get out of the park – stat. Apparently having legos come to life wasn’t in her list of fun things to do today.
J calmed her down with a lego safari.
Whatever he said must have worked wonders. Maybe he told her she could shoot them…I dunno.
Just so y’all know – we were there for a long time. All day – which means there are lots and lots of pictures.
She lovedlovedlovedloved the little kids’ play area. There was a train which I wedged myself in to…
and honestly, she was way happier about it than she looked in this picture. She was all OMGOMGOMG a train – waving wildly at J on each circle ’round the track. I was all OMGOMGOMG because there were vegetables made of legos everywhere.
And she was in heaven with the playground area – liberally scattered with legos, of course. Except she couldn’t be happy with the billion and two lying around everywhere and instead started sneakily disassembling a fireman when she thought we weren’t looking. We rescued part of his hand from her pocket shortly after this photo was taken.
There was also a maze
which I had to lure her out of with the promise of carrying (and using) Mama’s chapstick.
We moved on to the Sky Cruiser ride which is like a giant lego car atop a track above the park. This is one of the more popular rides so we hurried over to get in line and wait. And wait we did. I stuck it out in line while J took Ava over to the adjacent lego play area strategically placed by most rides so parents can wait and kids can play. Great idea in theory but, according to J, not so much in reality since it was full of unsupervised brats who kept stealing each others legos.
Hence the evil eye in these photos:
All the while I’m waiting in the super long line – and thinking that for sure the kid in front of me was too little and betting he wouldn’t be allowed on the ride. So guess who was actually too short and was denied access to the Sky Cruiser? Yeah, that would be us. Well, specifically it would be little miss 35.5 inches who needed to be 36 inches. I was livid, by the way. We’d had her measured at the first ride and they said she was good to go for the 36 inch rides and it was mighty annoying to know you’d just waited for over an hour only to be turned away. I think it was at this point that I began to hate legoland – if only for a brief moment.
More dirty looks from J when Ava would get tired of waiting in line:
She toughed it out, though. And then she rode almost every thing that they would let her on.
Oh boy, guess what we found? More legos, Yay. <– insert sarcasm here
Ava, thankfully, was so bored and tired that she slept through this whole part of the park. I could have. For me, it was nifty for about 3 minutes. For J, I think he could have moved in and lived there forever – he loved it that much.
Although J did meet someone famous.
I do realize this is getting long and tedious so I’ll sum it up.
Legos. Everywhere.
And then Ava talked us into yet another expensive souvenir and our day came to a timely end when she was eaten by a shark. The End.
Okay, not quite the end.
We had some time to kill after the park closed since our flight didn’t depart until 11PM so we drove around a cool little island we unexpectedly discovered, found a park to let Ava play in, met some really nice people, and watched our last San Diego sunset.
The End. (For real, this time.)