Gametes In Love

Last year, I decreed that we’d celebrate G turning 3 with a trip to Disneyland. I figured that it would be a lower-effort/lower-cost  venture over another birthday party. Boy was I wrong… at least on the cost part 🙂

I’m glad we did this trip! I think that in another few years when we go again, G will be much more into it… and in preparation I’ll actually have to show him some Disney movies. Yeah… that might help build more excitement. You see, I’m a big Pixar fan. G has seen every Pixar movie out thus far. However, the Disney classics? Not so much. Lion King is about it. His summation of admiration for other things Disney can be summed up in the following two mentions:
1) He calls Mickey “Nicky Mouse”
2) On our second day he walked right past a gaggle of little girls tripping over themselves to get autographs and hugs by Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty) and Snow White, who were conveniently standing 30′ apart, only to exclaim “Hey look! A duck!” I’d like to tell you he was pointing and Donald, but alas, no. He was referencing your standard-issue duck, hanging out in the little moat around the Disney Castle. The same ducks he spends 10 minutes admiring every Thursday after swim class.

G will tell you that his favorite part of the park was meeting “Nicky”. However, I think that (overall) his favorite part of the trip was the hotel pool. We stayed at the Howard Johnson across the street from the park, which had a kids’ pool w/ a 1′-deep wading pool, water slides, and other water features. We spent a few hours there each day and he was in heaven. As was S2. The water was warm. He could do all of his water shenanigans.

One thing that both S and I found remarkable was that for the first time, since he was 18m old, G asked to get in the stroller to ride. More remarkable was when he asked to get in the stroller to nap: something he hadn’t done since he was 6m old! But I don’t blame the kid: it was a lot of walking. If I had a stroller available to me, and someone to push me around, I wouldda crawled right on in too. We unfortunately forgot to bring our second, umbrella stroller, which meant that S2 spent a lot of time being a pouch baby, while his brother rode in the wheels. We probably could’ve looked into the stroller rentals, but between 1 carrier and 1 stroller we did fine. Now if S2 had been a few pounds heavier, I might be singing a different tune.

Having Gamma and Gappa join us was awesome! I really wanted to share this experience with them, and like many other trips, having a ratio of 2 adults to 1 kid was amazing. My dad (or mom) would hang out with S2 on the rides he’d sleep through, or was too short to go on, while S and I rode with G.

Without further adieu, here’s a whole slew of photos. You didn’t think this post was going to be photo deprived did you? I did NOT bring my DSLR camera with me. It took a lot of going back and forth in my head, but at the end I decided to rent a newer point-and-shoot camera (vs. buying) and leave my fancy gear at home. Yes, the photos are suffering as a result, but I enjoyed participating in this trip and not trying solely to document it, AND as I predicted carrying an infant most of the time, was not super conducive to a few pounds of camera gear hanging off me too.

Here we go!!!

Breakfast on the go

Stop #1, about an hour in. S2 ate and stretched out

G ran around meanwhile, and discovered that our car magically could play movies

And consequently spent the next few hours looking like this:

… although he did also spend some time on his “pad”

Promptly at arriving at our hotel, we got dressed to go to the pool. The kids deserved it after the trip.
While we dressed, S2 attended to a critical task: trying to break into the hotel safe

And then tried to make some friends

The pool!!!

Our first day started off with waiting in the admitting line (a sample of lines to come)

S2 found this to be such an exciting experience he promptly fell asleep

G was mapping out our route (although thanx to RideMax that task was already complete)

Staring at the Finding Nemo seaguls

And our first submarine ride

Buzz Lightyear

… and then a bunch more rides and activies

Waiting for Mickey… er… Nickey 🙂

Like Gappa’s new look?

After the park… we had some more pool action

Day 2 included riding a flying elephant

A train

A Toady car

Turning some tea cups

A whole lot of waiting in line

Some more rides

Classic G tantrums

And one pooped out toddler

I wanted 1 mandatory photo of all of us together, and this was how we closed out our trip to Disneyland.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2011 at 9:56 pm and is filed under Raising Pre-schooler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.