Month: September 2010

We got up on Tuesday, had breakfast with Dave’s parents, then headed out to OC.  We stopped by a cafe that has come highly recommended by several.  On a whim, I texted Debbie to see if she was free (and no baby had arrived yet).  Fortunately, she was working from home and met up with us.  We had dim sum and pastry snacks for lunch, then headed on to the park.  As soon as we got to the parking lot, Peyton let out a “Yay!” from the backseat.  Brandon was talking about coming to the park when he turned 30.  He said he wanted to buy something for the whole family.  Then he asked, “Mommy, what can I get you?”  One of our first rides was a dark ride, which Peyton has watched before.  She was sitting on my lap to get a better view, but soon, she was picking up my hands to cover her eyes.  She’s recently become more aware of her surroundings, and things are becoming more scary to her.  Our double stroller may be close to running its course.  On more than several occasions, she does leg lifts from the rear seat and almost ejects Brandon from his seat.  We’ve been stopping and waiting for her to put Brandon back down before continuing. Brandon will yell at her, “Stop it, Peyton,” and Peyton will respond with a “NO!”  After she gets bored, or tired, she will say, “I will.”  We are encouraging her to use “I will” and follow through with it.  We were staying in a hotel nearby to avoid traveling back and forth between Dave’s parents’ house and the park.  At one point, Brandon told us, “I want to go back to the hotel.”  We asked, “Why?”  He said, “Because I like it.  I want to go to sleep.  I want to take a nap.”  So one day, we did that.  We told him that he had to nap in order to stay up late and watch the water and light show.  He’s seen it before, and he wanted to see it again, so he was motivated.  On our anniversary, Wednesday, we stayed at the park for over 12 hours.  The kids were cooperative, and we had a great meal at the nice hotel attached to the park.
On our trip, I learned to keep Peyton entertained by playing with her fingers and toes (she’s rarely with shoes and socks on).  We played “Piggies” and as soon as we get to the littlest piggy, she wants “Again?”  She will even try to do it herself, and hold up her fingers and wiggle them.
Brandon definitely hit a milestone by riding several NEW rides.  Too bad he waited until our second to last day to get up the courage.  It started with the river rapids ride.  It’s a big tire, that spins and makes its way down the course.  It was a hot day, so we told him to watch the ride, and then go on with Daddy.  He’s all about studying the rides, and then determining if he wants to go on it.  After that, he succeeded in going on Splash mountain, a log ride that he’s come close to riding several times on previous trips.  He’s even walked across the log to the exit, which Dave always gets really frustrated with.  But we didn’t want to force him, so he’d just walk off the ride with him.  From there, he did the swings (there is a tandem swing, so Dave and Brandon sat side by side and I’m glad, since I had visions of Brandon freaking out and trying to abort midway through the ride), jellyfish (which was more of a heights ride, and I took him on this), and Matterhorn.  I went on this with him, and told him everything was pretend.  I told him there was a monster in the mountain, but it was not real.  I told him that he could sit in my lap, and I would hold onto him.  There were also seat belts for each of us.  I wrapped my arms around him, but freed one to get my camera out to video our experience.  When I did that, he grabbed it again, and told me to hang on with both hands.  One wasn’t enough.  The whole ride, he kept saying, “No!  No!  No!”  I felt his heart racing so hard inside his chest.  Later, while we were on another ride, I told him he should relax because his heart was beating so fast.  He said, “How do you know?”  I told him, “Because I can feel it!”  That got the lady in front of us to turn around and smile at him 🙂   He kept wanting to ride the Haunted Mansion, but it was closed for renovation for Halloween.  He still asked several times a day, having conquered that our last trip.
After staying our last day just to ride some more thrilling rides, we went back to the cafe and headed over to Debbie’s new home (still no baby!).  We brought Pish his favorite bun.  Both kids had fallen asleep in the car; in fact, Brandon told me not to laugh at him as he was falling asleep (we love watching both kids fall asleep, because it’s done in stages).  In fact, he put his arm up over his face, so I couldn’t watch him.  We woke both kids up to go visit Debbie.  Pish and Katie were sleeping, so our kids helped themselves to Katie’s toys.  Katie soon woke up, and took some time to warm up.  After she did, all the kids were playing together.  Pish’s mom had to warn Peyton to be careful with the iPad that Katie was showing both of them.  Peyton didn’t like that at all, but it took her awhile to express that.  It went from protruding lip, then recover, then protruding lip, a look over at us, then recover.  She wasn’t able to hold it together, but Pish’s mom gave her a hug, and they made up.  Our kids are so deprived, not having any Apple products to play with.  Later in our trip, Mike was able to show Brandon his phone, and Brandon learned quickly to play one of his games.  He will soon be playing mindless games, just like Mommy.  We headed back to Dave’s parents’ home.  Peyton was trying to count in the car, “Daddy, eight, nine, ten, yay!”  Dave thinks she says, “Daddy” for seven because that’s the only 2 syllable word from one to ten.  Interesting theory.  When we got back to Dave’s parents, Brandon immediately wanted to feed the fish in the pond outside the front door.  Dave’s mom was watching both, and she said, Peyton would put her hand up in the air and say, “No bruddah!” because he was feeding too much at a time.  Peyton was methodical, putting one grain of food in the water at a time.  Brandon was impatient and just dumped it all in there.  In fact, Dave’s mom had to grab the canister as Brandon tried to dump the whole thing in the pond.  Since we had built-in baby sitters, we were headed out at night.  The first night, we told Brandon we were leaving.  He didn’t put much of a fight.  We were all downstairs, and heard Brandon say (presumably talking to Peyton, as there was no one else upstairs), “Are you going to stay with me, right?”  The two of them got to spend two nights falling asleep together.  The last night, we ended up heading back to the park, for some adult park time.  We hit up 3 rides in 2 hours; those rides that we can’t go on with the kids. Brandon was too short for one ride, and he was totally bummed by it.  It was motivation to eat more growing food.  And the other is too dark; he will probably not go on it for awhile, since it is totally enclosed in the dark, so I can’t show him what it looks like.  Dave’s mom left us a voicemail when they were asleep.  But she said Brandon woke up when he heard her calling us.  He went back to sleep after she told him she was just calling us to tell us they were sleeping.  Brandon didn’t want to leave the next day.  Our passes expire at the end of the month, so we tell Dave’s mom when we’d be back.
Our return trip took a lot longer due to several bathroom breaks.  We ate on our first stop, but Peyton was sleeping, so we had to stop again when she woke up.  Given we were on the road, we did something we hardly ever do – went to get fast food.  Fortunately, Brandon knows he only gets fast food when we are on the road.  We got Peyton a wrap with chicken, and I ordered a kids’ meal, as did Brandon.  Now, the meals come with apples instead of fries.  After the kids were done eating, I heard Peyton say, “Mommy, look, hat!”  I turned around to see this:

Not to be outdone, Brandon did this:

In particular, talking to a spouse or significant other browse around for info viagra generic cialis about something that is personal as ED condition can be challenging. This medicine is not cialis professional for sale molineanimalaid.org hard or in large form. Seeing a fellow struggling under a TV set, he quickly jumped in and offered to help. tadalafil 20mg india More sensitive to aged people, this can cause potential overnight cheap viagra problems in any marriage.

We got back home only to head out again to my grandmother’s 84th birthday party.  We figured we’d stay overnight at my parents, since we were already packed up and they hadn’t seen the kids in awhile. At dinner, the kids filled up on broccoli (Peyton even said, “I want broccoli”).  The last few days at Dave’s parents’, we didn’t get enough veggies.  Brandon was really worried when his poop was stuck in his bottom.  Dave said he was crying and freaking out when it wouldn’t come out at Dave’s parents’ house.  I told him to eat more veggies, so they were asking Dave’s mom for veggies left and right.  Even at the park, we were able to feed them veggies at most meals.  While we were playing MJ, we left the kids on their own to fall asleep in the room next door to us.  We figured they couldn’t get into too much trouble, and they were almost ready to sleep.  We had Peyton on the floor and Brandon on the bed.  They did a great job falling asleep on their own.  We went to check in on them and found this:

On Monday, after getting back home in time for bed, Brandon exclaimed, “Yea!  We’re home.  I can use my Sonicare!” Then he tried to figure out the pattern of hotel stays again, from the start of our vacation.  We did have a little pattern of one night in one place, 3 nights in another, then one night, and three nights, but it was broken after leaving OC.
Here are some more random pics.  Brandon picked some flowers for me (which look a lot like the ones that he made out of Legos)

We had an extended “week” long vacation.  It all started with Peyton’s school being closed on Thursday and Friday, the 26th and 27th of August.  I took those days off to be with her at home.  I also wanted to take our anniversary, 9/1 off, but the way we block off and request vacation days at work would take away other requests I could make the rest of the year.  We get 4 blocks to request in total.  A block has to be consecutive days or one day, but the way I wanted would have been two blocks.  So, I decided to take 8/30, 8/31, and 9/1 off.  That left 9/2, Thursday, then a 4 day holiday.  Only one decision there!  And since I didn’t want to be available to staff on one of our clinics on 9/7, the day after the 3 day holiday, I decided to take that off, too.  So, there’s the extended week’s worth of vacation.  We wanted to help Penelope celebrate her 1st birthday in Vegas, so Wednesday night, after work, we headed out to our midway point, really in the middle of nowhere.  We checked in after midnight, but our cookies were waiting for us upon check-in.  Peyton had been sleeping for most of our trip, while Brandon talked to us for a bit, then nodded off.  In fact, after awhile of talking, he said, “Okay, see you tomorrow morning,” and stopped talking.  Of course, they both wake up when we arrive at our destination.  It didn’t take much to get them down.  We had Brandon up on the king bed with us, while Peyton was relegated to the floor on top of the comforter.  Better so that she didn’t fall off the bed.  As soon as Peyton was placed on the floor, she curled up with the pillow and was out.  We got up in the morning and headed out on our next leg of the trip.  Brandon wanted to know where we were sleeping the next day, and we told him we were checking in to another hotel to see the strip.  While we normally stay with Meg and Jeff, Dave wanted to give the kids the “strip” experience.  So, we checked in and started our experience of walking around.  Meg had told us it wasn’t going to be “as hot” as it normally is.  This was still waaay hotter than we were used to, high 90’s, low 100’s.  I was ready and had packed all of their warmest weather clothing.  It’s the clothes that we normally have to layer at home, but this time, the kids didn’t need any extra layer whenever we headed out.  The true “strip experience” for the kids was to go to the circus.  There, we played some cheap carnival games.  Brandon really got into it, and even beat me at one of the games.  He was so excited and cheered with a triumphant, “Yeah!” while clapping his hands.  We wandered around and started a sizable collection of odds and ends toys.  Brandon made sure to share his prizes with his sister.  He was really sweet about it as he was doing most of the playing, with some help by us.  We met up with the Shih’s for dinner, then headed back out to the strip.  We were going to check out the water show afterward, but got “stuck” at an ice cream shop, which was a sister store to one in NY.  I wanted to try the signature frozen hot chocolate.  We ordered at the to go window, so maybe that had something to do with it only being so-so.  Definitely not worth the $11.  We shared some of it with the kids – the chocolate cookie stick that came with it.  The next day, we headed out early to beat the heat.  We walked a good part of the way down the strip, with the help of the trams in between some of the hotels.  We wanted to hit up some of the more kid-friendly stores, like the M&M store, which had a real life race car in it, a hit with Brandon.  We also found the other higher end carnival game hotel, but ended up coming up a bit short.  The midway area had just opened, and the games were a bit more costly.  After eating a buffet, the deal that came with our hotel stay, we headed out to see the Shih’s.  We arrived pretty much for naptime.  As soon as we got into the door, Grace came in to meet us.  Grace was saying “hello” by barking at us, until she was able to smell us all.  I picked up one, while Dave had the other kid.  Both kids were pretty freaked out.  In fact, Peyton, who has never liked dogs, said, “No, no, no please, no please,” while shaking her head.  She’d say, “No goggie.  No goggie.”  Grace took a particular liking to Brandon who would run in the house.  Grace thought it was a chase, so she’d run after him.  This would totally freak him out, and left him crying on several occasions.  She’d corner him and bark at him, thinking he wanted to play.  He’d get louder with his crying, and she’d get louder with his barking.  It was so bad for Brandon, his knees were knocking together, visibly shaking.  It was funny, but sad, all at the same time.  After our nap, we headed out to the pool.  It was 5pm, but still quite warm.  And breezy, which made it a bit cool once the kids were in the pool.  We didn’t last too long because the kids were pretty cold.  Peyton is pretty buoyant – “fat floats” totally works for her.  As soon as she gets her legs up, she is totally floating.  I think she is our water baby.  She listened to us when we told her to kick her legs, and was really having a great time.  Brandon doesn’t listen as well, but we did get him to be calm enough to take a deep breath and hold it while being dunked under water.  He hasn’t had any formal lessons because we felt he wasn’t ready.  He is too giggly, and isn’t able to follow directions because of it.  I took Peyton out first, and wrapped her up in a couple of large pool towels.  The warm breeze was okay for me, since I was wearing less than Peyton.  That wasn’t acceptable for her, and she whined to me and said, “Mommeee.”  I didn’t get it at first, but when I covered myself up with the towel, she stopped whining and nodded in approval.  We were going to eat at the club, but the wind was too much.  We decided on Islands instead.  Yummy.  We had to go back to the house and quickly change since some of us didn’t come totally prepared.  I didn’t have any clothes for any of us; we don’t go swimming often enough for me to be prepared.  All four of us changed in a manner of minutes, and headed out.  The pool wiped the kids out, and they were hungry.  After dinner, we all went our separate ways, as the next day would be the day of the party.  One thing that was really nice was to have breakfast all together with all the kids there.  Grace was taken to school on both Saturday and Sunday, so the kids never saw her.  Poor Grace, but given how amped up my kids were around here, it was a more calm environment when she was at school.  For the pool party, I had my act more together.  I brought everyone a change of clothes.  There was a wet play area in front of the picnic site, but once Peyton got wet, she was too shivery. Dave thought it would be better to hang out in the pool to be submerged to keep the kids a little warmer.   Again, the kids didn’t last too long in the pool because it was pretty windy.  We had gone to a different pool than the day before.  It was free, with no one in it.  Later did we realize why that was the case – it was the adult pool.  Oops.  The lifeguard came over to tell us for future reference.  We hadn’t lasted but 10-15 minutes anyways because of the cold.  Brandon chose to drink juice over having cake (still trying to give him choices, and work on delayed gratification).  He looked at the cake longingly when it was cut, and with our gently reminding him, he was fine and walked away to let the rest of us enjoy ours.  I chose the cake over the juice 🙂  The kids all had a great time.  We didn’t want Brandon running around with the other kids, because we were afraid he’d be the one to slip, fall and get injured.  He was happy to play with the helium-filled balloons and hang out with his sister.  The sun started going down, and Peyton was nearing the end of her party.  She was pulling on her eyelashes (something that she’s recently started doing when she gets tired).  Later, as we were helping take down decorations, she said, “Go’me? (Go home)”  We bathed the kids quickly, and headed off to sleep.  It had been such a long, fun-filled day.
We woke up on Sunday and had our usual breakfast.  Jeff had to leave for an orientation for Abby’s school.  He did meet up with us later, ditching the last part of it, and we all went to a yummy brunch buffet at a fancy restaurant a little off the strip.  It was a buffet like we’ve never been before – as you order off a menu and it’s brought to you at the table.  There were also stations where food was prepared and served there.  The fruit was all cut like sashimi size and presented so nicely on a plate.  There was a smoothie, pannini, and sushi bars.  I gave in to all food restrictions for Brandon and let him go nuts.  I figured that we were going to try everything, so I didn’t want to limit him.  He had cornflake French toast with me, a Mickey mouse shaped pancake, chicken and waffles, popcorn chicken, to name a few.  We ordered a bunch of things and shared it amongst the table.  We forgot to take pictures of our feast.  Peyton slept through most of it, allowing us to enjoy our food, only having to concentrate on Brandon.  When she did wake up, we made up some of our money’s worth in her.  While “free” she ate chicken, fruit, and some yogurt (although she gave us a sour face in doing so and said it was “Yucky”).  The finale was the best; it was called the “Junk food plate”.  How can you go wrong with that?  This is when we cracked down on Brandon and went back to making him make a choice in what he wanted.  He got to pick two things to try.  It was plenty for him.  After that, we decided we’d better take a walk.  So, we walked around the shops some and found a Chinese carver who was making busts out of clay.  The kids the two carvers were working on were sitting there in front of them while they did their work.  Meg was interested, and the more we watched their work, the more we wanted to do it.  Meg was able to broker a deal since we were doing 4 kids.  They even threw a bit more in for Meg and Jeff given Jeff’s ties to the university.  It was only after that we realized they only take cash.  Luckily, Dave and I had each pulled out money from the ATM “just in case”.  Here is the final “masterpiece” – can you tell which kid is which?

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Our last day in Vegas was drawn out because I wanted the kids to play together some more.  We were going to take off after breakfast, then as Jeff was leaving for work, and we were deciding if it was time to say goodbye or not, we decided to wait and leave after dinner.  That gave the kids freedom to have an unstructured day, with all of us together.  Jeff suggested Abby try a “plank” contest with Dave. Dave complained his back hurt, and planking wouldn’t be a good idea.  I decided to try.  I had planked with the Wii, which is only a minute in duration.  Abby proved to be much more formidable.  Jeff came in while we had already started, and said, “Abby, Robyn Ai Yi is pretty strong.”  Abby looked over at me and said, “Yeah, but you are shivering though.”  So true, so true.  I didn’t make it much more after the taunting.  No one else in my family could do it.  Abby probably could have maintained the position all day.  But after I failed, she came back to playing with Brandon.  As planned, after dinner, we headed out.  While at dinner, we saw a whole team of SWAT and later some sheriffs eating.  I definitely felt safe there 🙂  I asked Brandon what he missed the most about Las Vegas.  He said, “Playing with Abby.”  He also said multiple times to Penelope, “You’re so cute!”  He continued to tell us that in the car on our way back to Dave’s parents.  We got into our next stop pretty late.  Dave brought Brandon in and put him on the couch, and came back to get bags.  I entered with Peyton, and saw Brandon, lying awake, but motionless.  He scared me because I thought Dave would have brought him upstairs.  When we got everything in from the car, Peyton was up and re-familiarizing herself with her grandparents.  Brandon was in no mood.  He said, “I’m tired, I want to go to sleep.”  Dave brought him upstairs and that is what he did.  He is usually the last one to go to sleep, but I think he is realizing his limits more and more these days.  When we went upstairs after chatting with his parents, this is what we found:

More from our second half of the trip later.  I’m pooped.