Birthday in Disneyland!

Yesterday was Carter's 4th birthday. It's hard to believe it's been 4 years, though in other ways it seems like Carter has been around longer than that! Carter hasn't really expressed any interest in having a birthday party yet and so we really wanted to do something to make his birthday extra special. After thinking about a few different options, we decided to take a weekend trip to Disneyland to celebrate.

We flew to LA on Friday afternoon and checked into the Disneyland hotel, a place we've never stayed before. Though Doug and I used to go to Disneyland a lot back when we lived in Tucson, it's been more than a decade since we've been here. This area has changed a lot! The Disneyland park used to stand alone, surrounded by parking lots. Now there's another park and a Downtown Disney area, and it all looks so different than I remember. But it's very compact and that's a nice change from Orlando. It's a quick walk from our hotel to the monorail station, and then the monorail takes you right into the park, bypassing the entry plaza. That's nice first thing in the morning! We spent most of three days in the park (we spent one evening in the California Adventure park, but otherwise we stayed in Disneyland), and I took most of the pictures on Carter's actual birthday on Sunday.

Here we're riding the monorail at 7:00 am -- yay for Extra Magic Hours!



For some reason the minimum heights of many rides were different here than in Orlando, and Carter was able to ride everything except the Indiana Jones ride. He got to ride Space Mountain (which he's too short for in Orlando) for the first time, and he loved it! We ended up riding it 4 times over the course of a few days.

Carter also enjoyed riding Star Tours, the Matterhorn, Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain (on which we got soaked first thing in the morning, brrr!), and Pirates of the Caribbean (the Disneyland version is the best there is, IMO). Two rides were completely redone for Christmas, to my surprise: It's a Small World (the characters sang "Jingle Bells"!) and the Haunted Mansion (reimagined as The Nightmare Before Christmas). Carter was a little perplexed that the Christmas decorations were still up and kept saying, "But Christmas is over." Heh.

After spending some time in the Magic Kingdom park in Orlando, this view of Disneyland from Main Street seems to be missing something:



Sleeping Beauty's castle is puny compared to Cinderella's in Orlando! It's strange to look down the street and not see that huge castle dominating the park. Disneyland is far more compact than the Magic Kingdom as well, and that makes the park feel very different.

Carter liked riding rides, but Tom Sawyer Island is always a great place to spend time.



We never did ride the steamboat this time, unfortunately!



Carter also had fun playing on this fire truck.





We spent a lot of time in Toon Town, where there are lots of things to play on.





We did the mass birthday party at the Plaza Inn, which Carter was honestly too tired for. In retrospect we could have skipped it!





Everyone got a little cake to decorate.





Needs more sprinkles!



The final result, which he wasn't interested in eating:



And then there was a surprise visit from Mickey and Minnie!



We ended the day early on Sunday and spent the evening in the hotel room. We can see the park's fireworks from our room, but Carter fell asleep an hour or so before, so he missed them. Doug and I were kind of glad to have an evening to relax, though! We pushed it too hard on Sunday and should have taken a break earlier in the day, in retrospect.

We decided to do the character breakfast in the hotel this morning. Here Carter is hanging out in one of the Autotopia cars in the lobby.



We got a picture with Pluto. There were lots of other characters roaming around, but somehow we didn't get any other pictures.



The Happy Birthday button got Carter lots of free desserts this weekend!



We rode lots of rides today and had fun in the park. He and I made our own lightsabers, and we're going to have a lot of fun with those when we get home! Carter seemed to be done in mid-afternoon, so we headed back towards the hotel. We took him by a make-your-own toy car store in Downtown Disney, and he picked out a flatbed truck with very basic features. (He named it Sally and says it's a space flatbed truck.) He had fun watching the guy put it together.



We've been hanging out in the room ever since, and he seems to be enjoying having some quality time with his toys. As Doug says, "World class amusement park: miss. $20 plastic toy: hit!" It's been a fun weekend, though. One of the things that's been really cool on this trip is that Carter is now old enough to ride some cool things, and he actually likes those rides. Space Mountain was one of the first rides he went on (which, for those who've never been to a Disney park, is a fairly fast roller coaster ride in the dark), and when he came off of that grinning, I knew he was going to be able to ride everything! It's definitely more fun for me and Doug than it was a couple of years ago.

Carter seemed to enjoy the trip, but on the actual day of his birthday he wasn't very happy about turning 4. He kept saying, "I'm not really 4 yet; I'm just turning 4." He also said that after he turns, 6, he'll turn 3 again. He seemed a little distressed about being a year older, and he seemed worried that being 4 means he's a big boy now. I think I may have stressed him out about this birthday! :-/

And it seems like a big birthday, somehow. It seems like he's a big boy now in a way he wasn't before. 3 is still a baby in a lot of ways but 4 is a child, no doubt about it. But hey, he can still be a little boy for as long as he wants. I don't mind. :-)

And now, we're off to ride Space Mountain one more time before the park closes...

Christmas in NC, part 2

Happy New Year! I meant to get more of these Christmas pictures posted before New Year's day, but didn't manage it. I'll combine Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so there will be a lot of pictures in this post. Fair warning!

We spent Christmas Eve at my Dad's and Barbara's house. My mom and Rick, Donna and her family, my step-sister Lynn and her family, and step-sister Nicci and her boyfriend and his parents were all there as well. The kids had fun playing together, and there was an impressive spread of food, as always!

Here is Emma all ready for Christmas:



Carter and Emma played some "tunes" on the piano.



All the little kids had somehow lost their pants once time to open presents came around!



It was fun to watch them all open presents and get excited about new toys.





Here is Carter with Uncle Chris, trying our a megaphone gift from Nana.



Carter opened one gift and would have been happy to stop there. It actually took a while to get him to open something else! Which says a lot, really. He wanted to open a little airplane playset while we were still at Dad's house, and we told him that we would open it when we got back to Nana's house. He fell asleep on the way back, and then slept until 9:30 on Christmas morning! When he woke up, Mom asked him if he wanted to see what Santa Claus had brought, and he said, "Did he bring my airport from Papa's house?"

Once in the living room, he completely ignored the pile of presents, went straight to the box with the airplane playset, and insisted that we open and assemble it. It was a good 15 minutes before he could be convinced to open any presents!



There were lots of toy tractors for him to unwrap:





And a big fire truck from Grandpa and Grandma Smith.



John Deere was definitely the theme of the morning!



He also enjoyed this crane from Nana.



We lounged around and had a brunch of red velvet pancakes. We headed up to Mount Airy in the early afternoon for the family gathering at my Aunt's house. My mom's parents and both her siblings and all my cousins were there. It was a big crowd, but fun as always!



We got the kids to sing a little before we started opening presents. Sort of...



Here they are waiting patiently for the gift opening to begin.



Then it was a blur of paper and boxes for a while!



After the presents were unwrapped and played with, one of the kids decided it was bathtime, and the next thing we knew they were all naked. So, into the bath they went!



After that we all just hung out and enjoyed each other's company.



Carter had a great time playing with his cousins. I have such great memories of these family get-togethers when I was a kid, and the Christmas ones were so very special to me! I can remember being so excited and everyone laughing and enjoying each other's company. I really hope Carter has similar memories of Christmases spent with family!

We lingered over conversation and full tummies, and then finally set out to go back to Greensboro to my Mom's house. I'm always sad that Christmas is over. It's a holiday I look forward to for months, and then it seems to pass by so quickly! And Mom and I realized too late that we'd forgotten to get a picture of all the kids with my grandparents, and we were both sad about that. It's so rare that ALL of us are together like that, and we definitely missed an opportunity to get a photo. :-(

The holiday wasn't over yet, though. We still had an awesome gift left: my dad and Barbara had gotten us a night at the Great Wolf Lodge in Concord as a Christmas gift! I'll write all about that in my next post.

Christmas in NC, part 1

I meant to post several times during our trip to NC, but the time just got away from me. I'll try to catch up over the next few days.

We flew to Greensboro on Sunday the 18th, arriving in the afternoon. We spent that evening hanging out at my Mom's house, and my sister and her kids came over to play. Carter had a blast running around the house and playing with them, as usual. I think this was the first time Doug's really seen him playing with his cousins and he was surprised at how excited Carter was to play with them!

Unfortunately, Doug had to go on a business trip for a good chunk of the week, so he missed out on much of what we did. Even more unfortunately, he was sick with what we'd later learn was a sinus infection, so the time we did have he didn't even get to enjoy so much.

Carter and I spent Monday afternoon at the Greensboro Science Center, and we basically spent the entire time in the kids' play areas! In fact, we went back a few days later with the intention of going to the zoo there, and he was upset because he thought we were going to spend the entire time playing again. This is a picture from the five minutes he spent in the zoo before we headed back in to play.





On Tuesday we went to the awesome Greensboro Children's Museum, where Carter had a blast playing. We had lunch with Nana and then went back to play for the rest of the afternoon. I basically had to drag Carter out of there!

On Wednesday we went to Mount Airy to visit my grandparents. We had lunch with them and then went to the John Deere toy store in downtown Mount Airy. Carter and I had been talking about going there for six months. The last time we tried to go back in October, they were closed, and Carter was devastated. This time I called ahead to check the hours first, and he was so excited! We walked in the door and he did a single lap around the store, picked out a toy, and said, "Okay, this is what I want to buy." I tried to convince him to keep looking, to check out the vast array of John Deere tractors, to just hang out a bit, but that was it. He was done. A couple of minutes later we were headed out the door again, purchase in hand. I couldn't believe it! We spent that afternoon hanging out at my grandparents' house and then had dinner downtown with my Uncle Scott and Aunt Pam before heading back to Greensboro.

On Thursday we hung out at my sister's house and played, and then we all went to see the Chipmunks movie. This was mostly a success, though Carter is still not quite ready to sit through an entire movie. Afterwards we played at Donna's house a little more, then went to the airport to pick up Doug and then on to the Greensboro Colosseum, where Donna had tickets for us all to attend a UNCG basketball game while enjoying a special lounge. We had a buffet of hot dogs and hamburgers in an area where the adults could watch the game and the kids could run around and play, and it was a lot of fun!

Friday was the first day I remembered to take pictures, somehow. It was also a dry day after several days of rain and it was even unseasonably warm, perfect for playing outside. Carter spent a lot of time playing with his cousins at Nana's house. They rode vehicles down the driveway, ran around in the grass, rode the zip line, and even found some dirt to dig in.

















All of the kids loved watching funny YouTube videos on Nana's iPad!



That takes us up to Christmas Eve, which I'll post about tomorrow. :-)

Various holiday stuff, weekend without TV

Doug was gone this weekend (on the other side of the planet in Singapore and now India), and weekends without him are always strange. He's gone a lot during the week, but there's something different about the way it feels to not have him here on a weekend. It's a lot more intense for me, certainly. It's harder to get basic housework and errands done when you don't have a co-parent, for one thing. I don't envy single parents at all!

But we had a fun weekend anyway. It's our last whole weekend at home before we head to NC for Christmas, so I wanted to do some Christmas-y things. Carter, of course, mostly just wanted to play. He knows Christmas is coming sort of vaguely, but because we've carefully avoided placing any emphasis on it being about him getting lots of presents (he'll figure that out soon enough), he doesn't seem to be terribly excited about it. He loves the lights and the decorations, though, and so we've had a lot of fun with that.

One thing I decided to do this weekend was to keep the TV off the entire time. It wasn't nearly as hard as I expected, and neither of us actually missed it at all. We had some Christmas music playing off and on, but for the most part it was just quiet in the house. Except for when we were doing our own hard rock version of "Jingle Bells", with Carter on the drums. Definitely not quiet then!

We did a craft project I saw either in a magazine or online: a cardboard Christmas tree. I used an old box to cut out the pieces and we painted them.





We talked about different ways of decorating the tree (Carter still wants to add lights, but I wanted something more simple) and we ended up using glitter glue to make ornaments.



The finished product is really cute!



This is a picture of Carter talking to Doug (who was in India at the time) on the phone tonight. He always likes to put the phone on speaker, for some reason.



Last night I had planned for us to go to the Wildflower Center to see their Christmas light display, which is only this weekend. Carter loves Christmas lights, and he was really excited. We had dinner first at one of our favorite restaurants and then headed down there, about a 35 miles drive from our house. The parking situation was insane, though, and I drove around for a good ten minutes trying to find a place to park. I finally looked back and saw that Carter had fallen asleep, so I decided to just drive home. It was actually nice to have a quiet evening to myself - something I hardly ever get these days!

Today we finally got our own Christmas lights up, and Carter asked if we were going to see any lights tonight. I thought it would be fun to put on our pajamas and drink hot chocolate and ride around in the car looking at lights, and he completely vetoed the pajamas idea. He was adamant that pajamas are only for sleeping in! But that was just as well, because our plans changed a little anyway.

Here he is in the car, all bundled up with hot chocolate, ready for lights-viewing.



We drove around our neighborhood for a while, and we saw some awesome light displays. It was still early, so I decided to drive down to 37th street in central Austin, where there is a street that always does an amazing light display. We found a place to park and walked around, and Carter really loved it. In fact, he spent most of the time with this expression on his face:



The displays were awesome and kitschy and so Austin. Many of the displays were interactive:



A fascinating array of objects were lit up:



This giant pterodactyl was amazing!



The owner of this house was out front flying a remote control shark balloon around in the air. Yes, a shark was swimming in the air over our heads!



I had to drag Carter away, literally, and promised we'd come back later in the week with Daddy. On the way home he said he wanted to go to the Galaxy cafe and eat dinner (though it was 8:30 pm by then and we'd already had dinner) and then go to Krispy Kreme, and then go back to look at the lights again. This kid is a total night owl! Wonder where he gets that from? ;-)

It was a fun weekend, even though we didn't do most of the stuff I'd planned. But that's how it seems to go these days, and it's all good. For example, I'd planned to go to a play this afternoon, a children's theater improv show that seemed like something Carter would like. But then the time came to leave and he was having so much fun just playing that I couldn't see the point in going somewhere else to do something completely optional that he might not enjoy as much as just playing.

Another example of fun in surprising places came when he accidentally knocked over a tub of popcorn we'd gotten as a gift from my aunt and uncle in Iowa (thanks so much, if you're reading this!). Half the popcorn, three flavors mixed together, was spread all over the hardwood floor by the Christmas tree. Carter and I just stared at it for a moment, and then I thought, well, what the hell? And I sat down and said, "I guess we'll just have to eat it off the floor, won't we?" And we sat there and ate popcorn for a while, and when we were both full of popcorn, he went and got some little diggers and dump trucks and hauled popcorn all around the room for a solid hour. He loved it! And after he went to sleep I swept it all up and threw it away, which was super easy. I would never have dumped it over on purpose, but it turned out to be something really fun, and it was so unexpected!

I guess that's one of the things I've really learned about parenthood that I didn't have a good handle on before -- how to live in the moment. There's something about having a baby that completely changes your perspective on time (or did mine, anyway), and I've been able to just stop and be in these last few years. Sometimes I just look at carter and what he's doing and think, Wow, how amazing is this? And I drop whatever I'm doing and sit down on the floor with him and play. Not as often as I wish I did, of course, and I could always be better about seeing the world from his perspective, but I try. And it gets easier all the time.

Especially now that we've hit the "why" stage full on. Tonight we came back from Christmas light viewing and he said he wanted to leave the garage door open, and I said no, we have to close it at night. So he asked why and I said that it was for safety, that we didn't want anyone to come in the middle of the night and steal things, and he said, "What would happen if they took our things?" and that started this whole conversation in which he seemed to be pushing me to talk about what would really be the worst thing that could happen if we lost some of our material possessions. He says so many things that make me stop and think, that surprise me, and I love that. I know that part is just beginning, too. :-)