This morning I got to sleep late (thanks Nana and Papa) and woke up to the enticing smell that is cooked bacon. I came out into the living room to find my children raring to go do something outside of the condo. They’d been to my in-law’s timeshare before and they had a list of things they wanted to do for the day. They’d had a tea party and breakfast already, the tea party having involved their stuffed animals, Nana’s “Flower Sitter” character and the tea set my husband had as a child—all things Nana had brought on the trip at their request.
We got ready in stops and starts, with a lot of the stops being due to my children not wanting to get dressed, having my daughter stop climbing the door frames and getting both of them to brush their teeth. The adults were finishing getting ready which involved a lot of discussion when my daughter had about had it with us dallying. She let us know this by saying, “can we go now? This is all not important.”
We went down to the play structure and could have easily lost them in the castle for a few hours but we were able to pull them away from this:
by telling them there were activities at the children’s center. My daughter made a frog stuffed animal following the Build-a-Bear process of stuffing the body with lots of stuffing, placing a small heart inside and then closing it up. The stuffing landed squarely on my shoulders due to the infernal difficulty of getting the stuffing all the way into the limbs of the frog she selected. But it was done eventually and she has been playing with the frog all day when we’ve been back in the room and the door frames haven’t been calling to her too strongly.
My son put together a model race car. That job it turned out needed not one adult’s assistance, but three, occupying my husband, grandpa and Nana to get the job done. My son raced the car around the race track outside the play room area and is now back in our room, but he has plans for it when we return home I hear.
We went next to a shopping/amusement area and spent the next several hours in an upside-down house doing all kinds of interesting things. Interesting if you’re sighted. Loud and scary if you’re blind. My daughter did the best she could, avoiding loud things (mostly everything) and being cautious of things I think she would have liked but wasn’t sure about because we couldn’t adequately explain them to her.
Some things she did like were included the large keyboard you played with your feet (or ran back and forth on it), the simulation roller coaster (she laughed and screamed the whole time) and the overhead suspension course we all went on. For the suspension course we all got strapped into harnesses and went above the attractions and went from platform to platform on walkways, bridges, planks and ropes. She couldn’t see well, but she trusted she was harnessed in and had liked it until we said it was time to go.
We went very early to a buffet seafood dinner and all overate. My son overate on crab legs and shrimp and then was quite cross at us because we said he couldn’t take the crab shells home with him on account of they’d smell terrible in the morning. My daughter wasn’t sure her Shirley Temple really had a cherry in it and the rest of us declared that two plates full of dessert might have been in excess but it was worth it.
The rest of my family is now either at the treehouse in the dark or swimming in the lazy pool, I’m not sure which, I was on the phone with my mother and missed where they were off to when they left. Just as well because I’m here and they’re there and I’m getting in the tub as soon as I finish this post. Vacation day one was a success I think all around.
The Big Boy Update: At dinner tonight my son informed Papa, “you know, I was five when I first started thinking.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We have a handicapped placard for our cars now but haven’t used it until today. We arrived at the very busy parking lot to go to the amusement area in heavy rain mid-day and decided it would be safer to park closer to the entrance. My daughter does listen, but sometimes we think it may be a good thing to have.
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