40 inches

In a few week my parents will be taking Elle to Disney World. If this seems a little unfair just let me point out that when I was pregnant with Elle they took Joseph to Disney World and a year later to Disneyland. Now it's Elle's turn for an entire week devoted entirely to her pleasure. (She's going to be a monster when she gets back.)

A few days ago we made an exciting discovery. Elle is now tall enough to go on a lot of the "E ticket" rides. Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Tower of Terror, Test Track, Soarin' and Dinosaur. She is so pumped.

All day long she asks me things like "Tell me all about Big Thunder!" and "Tell me all about Tow of Tear!" She has no fear. She knows some of the rides are scary but in her words "It's all about Mickey magic."

The other night we did the unheard of and skipped bedtime stories so that I could tell her all the details of the new rides she would be able to go on. With each ride I would describe she would have to add her part. "And when they measure me in the line I can tell them I am 40 inches for Big Thunder."

I stayed in her room way too late that night. I kept her up, rubbing her back and telling her every little detail I could think of about each of the rides. I don't know which of us enjoyed it more.

When she finally fell asleep she had a little smile on her face and she was muttering "40 inches, 40 inches..." under her breath.

I'm going to miss that baby so much when she's gone.

One year ago today I talked about death and manicures.
Four years ago today I was more boring than seems humanly possible.

By the numbers

Days in Disney World: 10
Pictures taken: 1987
Total hours of sleep: 54
Stuffed animals bought: 4
T-shirts bought: 9
Times Joseph rode Expedition Everest: 10
Frozen lemonades eaten: 12
Blisters: 5
Characters met: 27
Minutes Joseph screamed on the plane home: 60
Emails to go through: 115
Items in Google reader: 996
Days till we move: 2
Boxes left to pack: 8465
Free time I have to sit around and use the internet: .3 seconds
Good times had and memories made: countless
Days until I'm going to want to go back again: 4

How to have an awesome Disney vacation

1. Spend months planning your Disney vacation. Write up a detailed itinerary with all your plans and needed information on it. Type it up in spreadsheet form. Put it in a very special place so that you don't forget it. Leave it at home when you go on vacation. Feel like a dumbass.

2. The day night before your vacation starts have your children jump around on a bed. Yell at the to stop. Have their jumping get even more frantic, to the point where they resemble rabid monkeys. Go over to the bed to stop them. Have one of them kick you in the eye with their razor sharp toenail of death.

3. Read your child the same bedtime story every night for months. Get her to depend on it to help her fall asleep. Put it in a special place so that you don't forget to take it when you go. Forget it and leave it at home.

4. Decide to buy and home and sell your current one. Pack up most of what you own before you leave for vacation. Plan on closing on the house two days after you get back. 30 minutes before you leave for the airport have your realtor call you and say "Now don't let the ruin you vacation but......" Then have him explain to you how everything might fall through on the whole house buying/selling deal.

5. Make plans to attend the Halloween party at Disney Wold. Buy a costume. Put it in a special place so that you don't forget to bring it with you. Forget it at home.

We're actually having a really good time. The kids are having a blast. Elle is afraid of the characters and Joseph had a melt-down when we told him we had to leave Tom Sawyers Island but otherwise everything has been really good. Tomorrow my parents get here and I think that will be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to letting someone else watch the kids spending some quality time with my family.

Home again, home again

Joseph is home again. Thank you to everyone who sent good wishes and kind words his way. The really meant a lot to him and to me. Other than a little bit of a cough Joseph seems to be feeling great. In fact, he was even able to go to school for half a day today. He'll do another half day on Monday then two full days and then we're leaving for Disney World.

Yeah, Disney is coming up fast. I still have all the vacation packing to do PLUS all the moving packing to do. While I was staying at the hospital all I could think was that I wanted to get home and start working on all that. Now that I'm home and looking that huge pile of work in the eyes all I can think is that I want to go back to the hospital and hide out for a few days more.

How did all of this come up so fast? And why didn't I try to get more of it done sooner? Oh yeah, because I am a complete slacker.

Jiggity jig.

Chums

I'm having fun looking back at the old pictures I discovered. And I'm deleting pretty much all of them that I'm in. Blech. Note to three months post-partum self - Would it kill you to put on a little powder? Also, BUY A BRUSH!

Oh, and don't worry about what my kids are up to while I'm doing all this picture stuff. For the last thirty minutes they've been playing happily with a piece of velvet. Yes, I'm raising village idiots. (Bonus points for anyone who gets that reference.)

Disney overload

You know how you can tell that you've stayed up too late looking at Disney World pictures on Flickr? You have dreams about looking at Disney World pictures on Flickr.

It was a pretty Disney-ish weekend for me all around. On Saturday Jesse and I took the kids to see Wall-E. It was Elle's first movie in a movie theater and she did really well. I was a little worried when we started to walk into the theater and Elle shrieked in terror because the room was so big and dark. Opps, guess I forgot to warn her about that part. Once we explained that it was just like watching a big tv screen she was cool. It's all good in Elle's book if tv is involved. We all really liked the movie a lot and I would recommend it to anyone (even if it did make Joseph cry twice). It's really good.

On Sunday Elle and I went to my parent's house and my dad and I worked for hours on Disney autograph books for the kids. Yes, I know you can just buy them but ours are going to be special and the kids are going to love them. At leas they better because we spent a lot of time on them. Ok, confession. As we were putting the book together my dad and I kept saying things like "Let's use this picture of Jasmine! She'll like that!" and "Sleeping Beauty will like it if we use a picture of her in this dress!" If you ever encounter someone talking like that, don't even bother trying to get them help. They're too far gone.

I was looking through some stuff on my computer and I came across a ton of Disney pictures that I totally forgot I had taken. I'm going to be throwing them up on Flickr so if you're the sort of person who likes to kill time looking at other people's vacation pictures then you can check it out. In the meantime here's a picture I took of Expedition Everest as it was still being built.

Random musings 47

I saw Sex and the City the other night. I know that I swore I wouldn't see it but I did. Still love Charlotte and and Samantha. Still kind of "meh" on Miranda. Still hate Carrie and Big. The movie wasn't awful but it's kind of hard to get too terribly into the story when every time you see the main character you think "I hope you choke on your $500 shoes, horse-face". You know what's really great though? Seeing a movie with graphic sex scenes with your Grandma. Awkward!

I can't believe I forgot "Oh fer cute!" in my Speaking Minnesotan post. (Thank you!) I think I just hear it so much that I kind of forget that everyone doesn't say it. I admit though that I do prefer "Oh fer gross!" And "hot dish". How could I forget "hot dish"? Hot dish is what you non-Minnesotans call casserole. That's one thing I refuse to give in on. I'm sorry but it just sounds so stupid to me. If anyone ever hears me say "hot dish" please slap me. I've already given in an stared referring to soda as pop. Isn't that enough?

One time in middle school I bought this t-shirt that had the names of every lake in Minnesota on it. (Why did people think I was such a dork?) I wore it proudly until the twelfth person asked me "Is that the name of every person in Minnesota?" Then I wore it ashamedly.

How do you feel when a blogger you really like likes a blogger that you just cannot stand? Do you ever want to leave a comment for them saying "It's either her or me! I DEMAND THAT YOU CHOSE!" or is that just me? It's probably just me. No one else is that neurotic.

I already twittered this but I'm going to go ahead and say it here too. The other day I said to Jesse "You're never romantic anymore!" and he said "What? Did you want to have sex last night or something?" Yeah. Because that's what I meant. Meathead.

76 days until we leave for Disney World. All of the sudden it seems like it's coming up fast. I better start packing. One thing I'll need to pack? Diapers. Potty training is not going well. For a couple of days we had a little success and now nothing. Maybe I should leave Elle with my mom for the weekend to see what she can do with her. Although, if I don't learn how to do it now then how will I someday potty train my own grandchildren?

Well, that's enough stupidity for now I guess.

On pins and needles

I can't sit still. I'm on pins and needles here. I'm waiting for Jesse to call me and let me know that he made the reservations for our Disney trip. Thanks to my dad and I keeping a very watchful eye on Disney World specials and promotions we've dsicovered a way to get all our meals for free. That's a good $700 or $800 just for the four of us right there. This deal just started today and it appears there everyone and their brother is calling in to make reservations. Jesse had to try for 15 minutes before he could even get through and now he's spent the last 30 minutes on hold. What if he gets through and they say "Sorry! All our hotels are booked and all our park tickets are sold out!" Ok, so that would never happen but what if it did? That would suck rocks. So I cannot relax until Jesse calls to tell me the trip is booked.

Update! - Reservations are made! Sort of. Well, they're made but they have to be changed. Due to a kind of wonky policy they have with this free meal deal we would have to end up spending an extra $650 or so on hotel rooms and tickets than we had planned and wiping out our meal plan savings. So we're calling back tonight and changing some stuff so that we can comply with the policy and not have to sell off one of our children to afford the trip. Now I have to get cracking and make our lunch and dinner reservations. Becuse if you want to eat at Disney World you need to make reservations 5 months in advance.

My boy

My little boy is in California now for his week long vacation with grandma and grandpa. I miss him already. He called me when they had a layover in Las Vegas. He thought it was pretty cool that there were slot machines right in the airport. He wanted to play them too.

It sounds like he's already having a great time. I have to confess that I'm a little bit sad. I wanted to be the one who took him to Disneyland for the first time. I'm glad he's getting to see it and all but I still wish I was the one showing it to him. Sigh.

In other news, Jesse's office Christmas part was last night. It was pretty fun. About 20 different people stopped me to ask me if I was feeling better from my stomach flu. Jesse must have sent out a newsletter or something. It was a little bizzare to know that his entire company knew I had the poops.

Now I have to go brave the crowds to do a little Christmas shopping. Wish me luck.

Disney with a baby

I have my day by day run down of the trip started but it's on Jesse's laptop and I can't get to it right now so I'm just going to talk a little bit about doing DisneyWorld with a baby. Before this trip, when I would go to DW and see babies I would think "I am never taking a baby to DW!". How quickly things change.

You know what? It worked out pretty well. We had to take a few more breaks during the day so that Elle could nurse but that wasn't such a big deal. Most of the time there was a ride or shop nearby that Joseph wanted to visit so Jesse would take him to do that and Elle would have a snack.

I used all the baby care centers in each park. Magic Kingdom and EPCOT have the best baby care centers. They're large and roomy and have pretty much every baby-related thing you could think of. The nursing rooms in both of them were really nice too. They each had 4 rocking chairs arranged facing each other so that you could sit and nurse and talk with the other mothers in the room. MGM and Animal Kingdom had smaller facilities with tiny seperate rooms for mothers to nurse in. Each place only had 2 rooms! I wonder what it's like when the parks are crowded!

Each time I used the nursing rooms the same thing would happen. I would start talking to the other women in the room and the coversation always went the same. We would discuss how old our babies were and how much they weighed. Then, without fail we would start talking about how awesome it was that we were all nursing instead of formula feeding. It may sound obnoxious but in this day and age when so few women nurse their babies we all seemed to think that we deserved a little pat on the back. I bet I could have used those rooms 100 times and had the same conversations. It was nice.

My only complaint about the baby care centers is that there is only one in each park. If you're not right by it when your little one wants to eat then you're kind of out of luck. Most babies are not going to happily wait while you trudge a half mile across the park so that you can feed them.

So I quickly became an expert at public nursing. (Yes Ben and Gwen, I've become one of those women!) My senses became fine tuned. My eyes could scout out a good, private spot from miles away. My body could twist and bend into shapes that I never knew possible so that Elle could latch on comfortably. I could quickly fashion a blanket (or a burb rag or her sling or even a napkin) into a little tent so that Elle could eat in private.

I only had one negative experience with public nursing. Once, as I was waiting for Jesse and Joseph to get off a ride this fat woman and her four fat kids stood there and openly stared at me. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I was totally covered up! It was obvious what I was doing but it's not like I was standing on a table and spraying milk around. I was being discreet. I didn't understand what the problem was. Maybe they were just hungry.

When we were at Downtown Disney I asked a castmember if there was a place I could nurse and she suggested that I use the bathroom. Yeah, not so much but thanks. How is that a good idea at all?

But otherwise things went very smoothly with Elle. She's a fantastic little traveler. She was happy to sit in her stoller and smile at us and people watch. If you ignore the time we had to spend at the World's Worst Emergency Room Ever with her (more on that later) she was no trouble at all. She ended up being a lot easier to do Disney with than Joseph was (more on that later too!) For now, Elle is napping and I'm going to get myself some lunch. I think I'll eat it in the bathroom.

The trip

The trip, she is booked. Our plane tickets have been bought and our hotel reservations have been made. We are going to be spending 5 days at the parks. Don't judge me.

Joseph's doctor has written a note that we'll be able to take to Disney World and use to get him a Guest Assistance Card. That will let us bypass some of the lines at certain attractions and use the fast-pass lines at others. That way Joseph won't have to deal with as much of the crowds and noise as you usually have to when waiting in line. I debated for a long time if we should do this or not. A tiny part of my feels like we might be doing something wrong. But when I think about it, he does qualify for a GA card and he would benefit from it. Plus, (and this is the big one) he has a lot of difficulties and disadventages that he has to deal with. He has to go to therapy twice a week, mealtimes are stressful for him, the list goes on and on. If he has to deal with all the not so great stuff that comes with being who he is then he should get some good stuff once in a while too. If his being the way he is lets him skip a couple of lines in Disney World then I think we should go for it.

Whyyyyyyy!?!?!

Joseph was watching a show on the Disney channel this morning and during a commercial I saw something that made my my blood run cold. It was a video with the little girl from the Cosby show (the youngest one who played Olivia, Raven Symone or whatever her hame is) singing "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Why? Why? Why why why why why why why?

Why does the world need that? Why take a perfecly fine little song and ruin it like that? Why does Disney insist on bastardising all of it's best stuff? I would love to sit in on a meeting where the company big wigs decide to do this crap. I think it would go a little something like this......

Disney Guy 1: Hey, Cinderella is a classic movie loved by young and old alike. How can we capitalize on that?
Disney guy 2: How about making Cinderella 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6? We can have Jessica Simpson do the songs!
Disney Guy 1: That's good but what about some of our newer movies? How can we make more money off of those?
Disney Guy 3: I know! Let's take a popular character ..... oh, let's say Stitch for example, and slap him on all of our old stuff to make it new and exciting. And let's have him read the announcments on the monorail it Disney World. If the Momorail is good, the Monorail plus Stitch can only be better. We'll have Ashley Simpson sing a song about it.
Disney Guy 1: Ok, so we've got the Classics and the new movies covered but how do we come up with new and fresh ideas for future products?
Disney Guy 2: Instead of coming up with new ideas let's just keep making sequels to the old ones. We can use the same ideas over and over and over. Or, even better, let's re-release the old movies with added scenes that are unneeded clunky and add a new "rediscovered" song. It can be sung by Raven Symone!
Me: You're all fired. Get the hell out of here.

Yeah. So that's that. I'm a pretty serious Disney fan so they should really listen to what I have to say. All I'm trying to do is keep them from ruining their company. At the very least they should stop having Raven Symone sing remakes of Disney Classics. That's just a bad idea.

Disney addict

It's amazing how "I don't think we'll go to Disney World at all" can turn into "Let's spend 4 days at Disney World" in the blink of an eye. Aye yi yi. All right. I caved. We'll be spending 4 days at Disney World. I need help. I'm a Disney addict.

Sunny days

It looks like Florida is in our future! Jesse has to do a project for the president of his company and he's been putting in a ton of extra time to work on it. He has to go to Florida to finish it up and as a thank you for all his work the company is sending all of us along with him. They're covering air fare and 2 nights in a hotel. We'll also have use of one of the company presidents cars. Woo-hoo!

We might extend our stay just a couple of days to so that we can hit a few attractions. Get ready to be shocked but I think that we will not be going to Disney World. We were all just there together and then I was there even more recently and Joseph was there even more recently than that. Plus, we wouldn't have time to hit all the parks and that would stress me out even more than missing them all. So, I'm going to check into Sea World and some other places.

Should be sweet! I'm mostly just glad to be getting away from this winter "wonderland" for a while!

Still missing Joseph

I am amazed at how much I miss Joseph. Everything makes me think about him. We went out to eat tonight with Judy and her parents and I got crackers with my soup. I found myself thinking "Joseph always wants to eat the crackers that come with soup. I should save these for him." I guess in case he's not getting enough stuff in Disney World I should have saved those two saltines that came free with my dinner.

He called tonight while he was watching the Halloween parade in the Magic Kingdom. He was enjoying it too much to say a whole lot but he did tell me that he got a lot of candy and saw the Headless Horseman. I talked to Dad for a second too and he said the Halloween party was "a ball". Then he had to get off the phone to take pictures.

Judy and her parents came for a visit today. It was nice to see them. We went out for dinner and then for ice cream and I don't think I will ever eat again. Judy brought a bunch of stuff she made for the baby. It's all so cute! There were blankets and changing pads and changing pad covers and burb clothes and crib sheets. She used a bunch of different prints and it's all very cute. Good to have that stuff ready to go.

I have to go sit on the exercise ball now, my back is killing me and that's one of the only things that seems to help. More Joseph stuff tomorrow.

My birth plan

I'm going to the hospital in about 15 minutes to meet with a labor/delivery nurse to get a tour of the birthing facilities and write out a birth plan. My birth plan will mostly include things like "give me lots of pain killers" and "I don't want to feel a lot of pain" and "try to get some of that slimy stuff off the baby before you put it on me".

I seriously thought I was in labor last night. I was having contractions and back pain from hell. It went on for several hours and nothing helped. The contractions slowed down and the back pain went away (kind of) overnight but I'm still feeling .... I don't know, weird I guess.

Joseph update! He called me this afternoon to tell me about the rides he had been on and to ask if I had gotten any new Scooby Doo books. My mom got on the phone and said this morning Joseph got very homesick and asked "Why did you have to take me on this vacation? Why couldn't you have brought Mommy with?" Ok, it's not like I want him to be homesick but I am a little bit relieved that he hasn't forgotten about me. I thought for sure he would be having so much fun with Grandma and Grandpa that he wouldn't ever want to come home and see me again. I guess he was so sad this morning that the only thing Mom and Dad could do to cheer him up was to promise to take him off Disney property and buy him some Scooby Doo books. Crazy kid.

Missing Mr Joe

I had three goals for yesterday:
1) Take Joseph and my parents to the airport.
2) To not turn into a blubbering, weepy mess.
3) Return home and gets lots of sleep.

I managed to do 2 of those, guess what ones they were. The day started when we woke Joseph up a little after 4 AM. He was so excited that his whole little body was trembling and he kept saying "This is the day I've been waiting for all my life!" He happily vibrated thoughout the house as we got ready to go. We got in the car and went to my parents house to pick them up. Joseph was on cloud 9.

All was good as we got to the airport and parked. All was good as we walked in. All was a little less good when it came time for my parents and Joseph to check in. I bent down to remind him to always stay where Grandma and Grandpa could see him and to be a good listener. He happily replied that he would and I turned into a giant weeping idiot. Then my mom started crying. Joseph didn't even notice, thank goodness. They checked in and then moved over to the security check point and I was still weeping like a baby. Hugs all around and Joseph gave the baby some "lovin'" (he kind of rubs his face against my belly). Then they went through security and I cried more. Then my mom saw us watching and had Joseph wave to us. He looked so cute and happy and excited and now I'm getting all choked up again just thinking about it. My dad had Joseph wave to us one more time and then we left. Before we walked out of the air port I stopped in a bathroom and started crying again. Then I cried in the car. Then I cried when we stopped to get something to eat. Then I cried at home. Then I slept for several hours.

Joseph called me when their plane landed. He kept telling me they were really in "boring Atlanta". He's a nut.

He also called at night to say hi. I asked him where he was and he said "Disney World!". I sounded like he was having lots of fun. He told me what rides they went on (Small World - he thought that was going to be scary because he saw a commercial for it and it had a tiger on it but really it was a "sweet ride". Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Spin - He covered his eyes and Grandmpa told him what was happening and then Grandpa also got the high score. TTA - They rode it 3 times! ) My mom said they also did Mickey's Philharmagic several times and that each time Joseph literally screamed with laughter.

It sounds like they're having lots of fun and they'll call again tonight. As for myself I am amazed at how much I miss him. I'm enjoying the break and believe me I'm taking advantage of it but at the same time I'm so lonely for my little boy. Sigh.

Too cute

For the past half hour Joseph has been sitting on the couch with his DoodlerPro drawing and erasing and redrawing what he calls "maps". He wants to draw a map showing how to get from our house to Disney World. He told me he wants to give it to the "flighter" when he flies to Disney World. I think he means the pilot.

For Ben

Ben,
The guys that I thought were so un-funny were two other guys that do stuff for Best Week Ever. The guys I was talking about are both named Rob and one of them is on Saturday Night Live now. The Cheap Seats guys crack me up to no end.

Th Louie Andrerson batting cage I was talking about may not have been in Disney World. Maybe it was at the Hall of Fame Museum or something. You said that you went in and pitched (or batted or something) and this voice would tell you how you did. You thought it sounded like Louie Anderson but Dad had no idea who that was. Is any of this ringing a bell?

Pixar calling

I just got a phone call from someone asking to speak to Nemo. When I said there was no on here by that name they said "Are you sure? Nemo Marlin?"

Um, yeah. I'm pretty sure Nemo Marlin doesn't live here. And neither does Flick, Boo, or any of the Incredibles.