Best Picture Ever!

photo.JPG, originally uploaded by bookemdano1978.

This is by far, the best picture of our trip to Disneyland. Ross made that sweet four year old ride Space Mountain. He had no idea what he was getting into and as I'm sure you can guess from the picture, Elliott was absolutely TERRIFIED the entire ride.

Such a cute look of fear and panic.

At least dad was holding his hand.

That boy!

As mentioned many times, my mother is numero dos of eight children. The oldest boy in her family, my uncle Dee was child number 6. According to many sources, including him, whenever my Grandma called his name as a child, it was preceded with a, "Dammit to hell!"  I love this picture of him as a little kid.  I think it probably personifies the spirit of his childhood.  He was strong willed, the first born boy and often gave my grandma a run for her money.

Now, fast forward a bit....oh, 40 something years to the little boy, almost two, who resides in my home. The one we call, The Chick. This kid...I tell you what. The moniker that my uncle so fondly remembers being his may start to stick to this kid. He's sick all the time and I'll admit that we baby him because of that. It's hard not to. Regardless, this kid has a mind of his own, a strong will, and is sneaky, sneaky, sneaky.

At Disneyland, when he wasn't coughing up a lung, he was dragging a blanket, whining and yelling at us. At several points during our trip he just gave up and found a great piece of asphalt to curl up on and call home. For the last 90 minutes of our car ride home he would pull his bink out of his mouth and scream, "DAD! UP! NOW! PLEASE!" because he wanted out of his car seat.

Yesterday, bless his heart, he had a nearly 4 hour nap and Elliott and I didn't know what to do with ourselves. There wasn't anyone to cough on us, yell at us, or take a swing. Today though he must be feeling better because that Chickadee of ours is back in true form.

Elliott was at school. I was folding laundry in my room and Wyatt was playing in his. I finished the laundry and checked on him. All was well. I came downstairs to send a few e-mails on the laptop. I literally didn't leave him unsupervised for more than 7 minutes. Not a big deal, or so I thought.

I came upstairs to get him ready to go and pick Elliott up from school. After there was no response from calling his name I should have known that I'd find trouble. And trouble there was. That boy of mine was hiding in a corner of his room. There was a familiar smell wafting from the bedroom. That boy of mine, upon closer inspection, was covered in St. Ives Apricot face scrub. It was in his hair, all over his face like a beard, up his nose a bit, and caked on his hands, shirt and pants.

I picked him up and carried him to my room. Luckily, the mess was all on him and he'd had enough common sense to place the squeezed out tube on an empty zip lock bag on my bed. Oh, so considerate!

We then marched into the bathroom and I stripped him down for bath number two of the morning. By this point, the stuff had been on him 10 minutes and he'd been rubbing it in...his entire face was blister red, as was a couple spots on his head. I was certain he was having an allergic reaction and I'd need to find the eppi pen. I also was pretty sure that he'd eaten some, he's that kind of kid, and I didn't know what I was going to do.

I got him bathed and dressed, carefully washing all the scratchy stuff off his face, avoiding his eyes. I then forced as much water and juice into his system as I could, hoping to flush it out. But then I figured he didn't eat any....his mouth looked clean.

Anyway....this kid is such a terror. His true personality came out on our vacation and I'm really starting to worry about what I'm going to do with him when he brings bugs and critters into my house. He already eats dirt....what next?

Elliott may have regularly scheduled meltdowns and tell me that I'm dumb. But, he isn't sneaky....except for that one time last summer when he shoved a q-tip into his ear and busted out his ear drum.

Yeah, except for that.

Disneyland! La, La, La, La, La, La, La Disneyland

We're back.  Did you miss us?

I'm really tired and my ankles are swollen from 12 hours in the car yesterday.

Yesterday we drove through 4 states.  Pretty impressive.  I also accidentally drove 100 mph yesterday.   But only for like 3 minutes because I wasn't paying attention.

Oops.

Anyway - here is a summary of our trip in list fashion because like I said, I'm just too tired.  And then, some pictures.

The Highlights -
*Rented mini-van's rule.  I didn't have to put the miles on my car and the boys had enough space that they didn't fight.
*Raising Cane's chicken fingers in Las Vegas are awesome.
*Disneyland is fun and very family friendly.
*My boys are brave.  Both boys rode on the Matterhorn and screamed at the Yettie.  Elliott rode on Thunder Mountain and Space Mountain, and everything else that he was tall enough to ride.  He was scared of Pirates the first time but after the second ride, he was singing, "yo ho, yo ho" the rest of the evening.
*Darth Vader scared us with his light saber.
*Captain Eo is awesome.  It almost made me cry watching it, having flash backs to when I was a kid and I LOVED MJ.
*Boys are cheap.  The only souvenirs they wanted were Buzz Lightyear lights and lasers.  And bubble guns.  We got out pretty easy in the souvenir department.
*I love churros.  Especially hot Disneyland churros.
*Visiting the park in the Spring is way less crowded than visiting in the Summer.
*Early entry rules.
*First time in my life I road Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
* I rode Space Mountain for the first time in almost 10 years and did not get sick.
*The ocean is beautiful but too windy and cold in March.
*I came home with a couple hundred dollars still in my pocket.  I love it when I don't spend all my money!

The Low lights -
*Cheerleaders!  They were everywhere and besides being overwhelmingly annoying, they were just really in our way.
*I didn't get a good Diet Coke in the park the entire three days we were there.
*Cold weather - I didn't pack for cold.  I packed for what I thought California weather should be like, not what the weather actually was.  We all managed to stay warm, but next time I'll pay more attention.

There really weren't any bad parts of our trip.  Except that the Chick was sick.  He started a really croupy cough on the drive down.  He puked in the hotel in Las Vegas.  When we got to Anaheim, Ross took him to an urgent care.  They said he had minor ear infections, a 100 degree fever, and croup.  They gave us antibiotics.  The medicine made him sick.  He puked three more times on the trip.  We had to get a new antibiotic prescribed.  We had to have the hotel launder all of the Chick's blankets because he went through 7 blankets (he's just like Linus in case you didn't know.  He drug a blanket through the park for three whole days) in about 24 hours.  The hotel charged us $175 dollars to launder 5 blankets, two little boy shirts and a pair of little boy pants.

Ridiculous!

We had long, sleepless nights with baby coughing and crying and screaming and the Chick had grumpy, coughy days and he only wanted his dad.  He was generally disagreeable but I think he still had fun.  On our last night in the hotel, he was particularly out of control and after almost two hours of screaming, being steamed out in the shower, fighting his inhaler he finally calmed down and went back to sleep....on a pillow, on the floor, in front of the door to our hotel room.

I also didn't know that being at the ocean was a bad idea for a two year old asthmatic with ear infections and croup.  The kid started coughing every 15-30 seconds as soon as we sat down for lunch at Rubie's Diner on the Huntington Pier and he didn't stop until we were inland again, and back at the hotel.

Anyway - that's it.  We survived our first long road trip with the boys.  We had a great time.  I'm grateful to my parents for taking us on such a grand adventure.  To my brother for being willing to hang out with his goofy nephews.  To my sister for being a baby pack mule with me.  There isn't anything better than spending three days with my family at Disneyland with a churro and a diet coke.

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Side note - I decided not to take a "real" camera on this trip.  I just took an iPhone 4 with a zoom lens attachment.  It was awesome.  I took nearly every photo with a hipstamatic app and they all turned out way cool.  It was a good decision.

2000 steps

2000 Steps. That's about what my pedometer told me I took sitting in the car from my house to Las Vegas. That's how many times I turned around to deal with the back seat boys in the rented mini van. Or how many times I hit my head on the ceiling mounted DVD player.

Were on vacation. So far, as with everything we do, it's suck city.

Nervous 4 year old.

Sick, puking, visit urgent care in a different state 2 yr old.

Insomniac mom.

Moderately uptight dad.

Tomorrow? We start three days in the happiest place on earth. Oh what can gO wrong? I doesntly really matter because were making memories griswald style.

And, tomorrow grandma is here.

Morning Conversation

Elliott:  Mama.  Do you want to get the new O'Cedar Pro Mist?

Me: huh?

Elliott:  It cleans your floor with a fresh start every time.

I guess he's seen that commercial one too many times on Sprout.