Disney World 2013 – Day 5

We were afraid that the torrential thunderstorms would return, so we waited until our last full day at Disney to visit Animal Kingdom (since most of the attractions there were outdoors).  I know a lot of people who like Animal Kingdom the most out of all the theme parks, but I felt like we did and saw the least amount of things here (it didn't help that the park closed early at 6pm).  Baby M actually fell asleep in the early afternoon, so I spent over an hour pushing him around in the stroller, going from one souvenir shop to another in order to avoid the sun, heat, and humidity.  Meanwhile, M and big sister K enjoyed a ride on the Kilimanjaro Safari and saw all the exotic animals in the park.

 

Donald Duck has somehow become baby M's favorite character.

I'm still not sure why we took a picture with Rifiki, but baby M seemed to like it.

 We can never get enough of Mickey and Minnie.

Just the kids.

Disney World 2013 – Day 4

On Wednesday, we headed back to Magic Kingdom.  We did a whole bunch of stuff we didn't get to do earlier in the week, but my personal highlight of the day was quite possibly seeing big sister K as part of the act in the Monsters, Inc.  Laugh Floor comedy show.  They tried to make it interactive and every once in a while, the camera would focus on a specific person in the audience to either poke fun or have them participate in a joke.  One of the acts that came on identified an audience member as each of the characters in the movie, and when it came to Boo (the little girl from Monsters, Inc.), big sister K’s face was plastered on the big screen.  She smiled, and when she was told to do peek-a-boo, she covered her eyes with her hands, then uncovered them, and repeated the motion a few times.  I don’t know if she understood what was going on, but she just went with it; I was so proud of my little girl!

 

When big sister K saw Tiana, she said to me, "This doesn't look like Tiana."  But she took a picture with her anyway.

 More family photo opportunitites!

 

Disney World 2013 – Day 3

After all the rain we got the day before, we were afraid that the weather pattern would repeat itself, so we took it easy on Tuesday.  Big sister K had been asking to go to the pool, so we let her do that in the late morning, then went back to the hotel to shower and headed to Downtown Disney for the rest of the afternoon.  Baby M fell asleep in the stroller while we walked around.  We went into “Once Upon a Toy” (supposedly the biggest toy store in all of Disney) and right in the front were kids playing with Mr. Potato Head.  For $20, you can fill a box with as many Mr. Potato Head accessories as you want (the actual Mr. Potato Head would be a few dollars more outside the box).  Big sister K wanted one, so we decided to get it for her and baby M (this is one of the toys his speech therapist brings over for him to play with).

Me and my girl.

The kids even had fun taking pictures with the display characters.

They couldn't wait to play with Mr. Potato Head that night. 

 The final product!

Disney World 2013 – Day 2

Monday morning, we left bright and early to Hollywood Studios.  Surprisingly, there were a lot of people waiting on line to go there from our hotel.  We ended up having to take a second bus, but even this one didn’t fit everyone; a third bus had to be called for the remaining hotel guests.

We managed to see some shows and take some pictures with a few characters before the onset of torrential thunderstorms that would last throughout the rest of the day.  We initially seeked shelter indoors and tried to wait out the rain, but after about half an hour, it was evident that the storms weren’t going to stop any time soon.  We used our two ponchos, but baby M refused to have anything to do with them, so we had to buy an umbrella which M used with baby M, while big sister K and I wore the ponchos.  I could not believe the amount of rain that came down for as long as it did.  This went on for about five hours straight, just a downpour of heavy rain that even went through M’s umbrella.  We tried not to let the weather deter us, but ended up waiting two hours for the Toy Story Midway Mania ride in order to escape the rain, at which time baby M fell asleep by the time we reached the front (only big sister K and I went on the ride... ended up getting a FastPass for M to return later on).

 Why did they decide to take turns closing their eyes for what would otherwise have been a perfect picture???

 

Glad the kids got to see Woody and Buzz since we missed out on this last year.

Disney World 2013 – Day 1

I was surprised at how crowded the resort was, considering all the kids should’ve been back in school.  With all the Spanish and Portugese-speakers around us, we quickly came to realize that most of the visitors were from South America... apparently they don't follow the same school schedule as the US.

We let big sister K choose the order of theme parks to visit, and her first choice was Magic Kingdom.  We got there right on time to see the Dream Along with Mickey show in front of Cinderella's castle.  That was all big sister K had talked about (she remembered it from last year), so she was thrilled.  We then visited the new Fantasyland that had just opened up.  All the lines in that area were ridiculously long, so we went on to Tomorrowland, where we went on the Speedway racecars, Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin, and then off to the PeopleMover, at the request of baby M.  We eventually made our way back to the other side of the park and enjoyed Peter Pan's Flight, Mickey's PhilharMagic show (baby M didn't enjoy this as much), the carousel, and of course, everybody's favorite "it's a small world."  The kids also got to meet their favorite characters, which was by far baby M's favorite activity.  We took pictures with Mickey, Minnie, Daisy, Buzz Lightyear.  Sometime in between, it started pouring on us.  Fortunately, it didn't last for too long, though we still made good use of the two ponchos we brought with us (purchased when we went to Disney World last year).  We tried to make the best out of it, but the rain (and forecasted thunderstorms throughout our entire stay) made us a bit uneasy as we decided how to plan out our itinerary for the rest of the week.

Mickey waffles for breakfast, of course!

 

Family photos!

Flight to Orlando

I didn’t think we could pull it off, but we managed to keep our vacation to Disney a secret from big sister K until the day we left (the procrastination helped since I didn’t pack until the day before).  We told her when she woke up that morning that we were going to Disney and the smile on her face was priceless!

We made it safely to Orlando on Saturday and surprisingly, baby M did pretty well on the plane… not excellent, but as good as can be expected, considering he didn't take his afternoon nap.  Thanks to the in-flight entertainment, big sister K was on her best behavior (she managed to watch the entire movie of “Monsters University” as well as some of “Scooby-Doo”).  The downside of it was that she waited until the very last minute to tell me she had to go to the bathroom.  While we were descending to Orlando and all passengers were supposed to be back in their seats, I had to rush my daughter to the potty.  Even all the flight attendants were buckled in their seats, so they didn’t even get a chance to tell us we weren’t supposed to be up.  Fortunately, we made it back while the plane was still in the air… but the drama continues.  M got really sick due to the pressure of the flight (his sinuses often bother him), and of course, baby M chose that perfect time to act up.  He started crying and for about 30 seconds, all the passengers around us must’ve thought we were torturing the kid.  Luckily, I managed to distract him by pointing out the window and showing him all the things on the ground.  He quieted down after that and was enamored by everything he saw outside.  M felt better once we deplaned, but vowed never to fly again without first taking medicine.

Be on the lookout for my next posting on our Disney trip adventures!

One Proud Parent

My two kids never cease to amaze me.  Each day, they do something different that makes me go "wow!"  Of course, there are the daily moments of frustration when they misbehave, but best not go into that.  Here are a few more memorable moments:

• Last week, I was reading an Elmo book to baby M.  In it was a picture of Elmo letting out a big sneeze, so I said 'AH CHOO!"  Baby M goes, "Bless you, Elmo!"  As I mentioned to a coworker of mine, my boy may be a little terror, but at least he's a little terror with manners!
• I gave baby M a haircut during bath time.  Surprisingly, he didn't give me too hard of a time (which is a first).  When I was done, he smiles and goes, "thank you mama!"
• A few days ago, I asked big sister K what she learned in school (those of you on Facebook may have seen this).  She tells me "carbohydrates" (saying the full word).  I asked her what a carbohydrate was, and she proceeded to list out all the different types of carbs, like pretzels, chips, waffles, pancakes, bread.  Wow, I didn't expect this in the first few weeks of kindergarten... but I guess I shouldn't be surprised, being that she learned about invertebrates and exoskeletons a few weeks ago (they were reading a book about insects).  I had to google the two words to find out what they were!
• My proudest moment of the week goes to baby M, who peed in the toilet last night!  I was preparing him for bath time yesterday, and he asked to sit in the toilet (which he periodically does, so that's nothing new).  I didn't really expect him to go since he usually just sits in it for a minute, then tells me he's all done without having done anything... but yesterday, he actually peed in the toilet!  Hopefully this means a step closer to being potty-trained.

Fruit Trees

Our Saturday afternoon took an unexpected turn when we stopped by Lowes to pick up some more tiles (we're currently having our master bathroom renovated).  To our surprise, the fruit trees were on sale from $19.98 down to $12.98.  We had been wanting to plant an apple tree in our backyard for quite some time now but never got a chance to (our feeble attempts at growing a tree from inception using apple seeds has not yielded any results), so we picked up a pear tree and an apple tree.

Since this was an impromptu purchase, we didn't exactly have time to strategize beforehand how we were going to bring them home.  M wanted to open the trunk window and stick them out through the back of our Honda Pilot, but the trees could roll around in the back and potentially cause the branches to snap.  My suggestion (which we ended up going with) was to stand them up between the driver and passenger seats so that they would stick out through the moonroof and I could hold on to them.  Going at 30 miles an hour wondering if the trees would survive the wind and hearing a fussy toddler cry for milk in the backseat made the four mile drive home seem like an eternity.  We eventually made it back and ended up spending the afternoon in the backyard planting our two new trees.  It was a great way for the family to do something together outdoors on this beautiful Saturday.  We even took the kids for a bike ride around the block afterwards.

I can't decide whose pose I like more, baby M's or big sister K's...

The kids "helping."

Here is the end result: tree on the left is golden delicious apple and tree on the right is orient pear.  Hopefully these will bear fruit in a few years and we'll be able to go picking in our own backyard!