In which I lock up my ‘Mother of the Year’ Nomination

We went to Disney on the 15th for a week. And then we came home, and real life resumed, which meant that aprox 48 hours after we got home, the husband got on a plane (”in da sky!”).

The husband is in Colorado this week and because of conflicting schedules I haven’t really spoken to him much. He’s working the ‘late’ shift on his show, and I have the ‘early’ shift with the toddler so we haven’t really been awake during each others free time.

Monday he was able to call before he started work. Three and I had already had a busy morning of errand running and I was in the process of putting away laundry. In to Three’s room I go, laundry in hand, husband on the phone while Three plays contentedly in the living room. I am in his bedroom for 5 minutes, tops. I walk out of the room laundry happily in its place and the door to our apartment is open. As is the outside door. And the toddler is not where I left him.

The next 60 seconds or so feel like an eternity. I tell the husband I don’t know where Three is, and I don’t really think he understands that at that moment, I didn’t know where the child was. I ran outside and he was no where to be found. I hang up on the husband. Shout to our neighbors across the way who were sitting outside and they hadn’t seen him either. And that’s when in my head I see an image of the bathroom door closed. I run back into the apartment open the bathroom door, and there is Three, giggling away.

He is so grounded.

The deadbolt in my new best friend.

“To 5 Years of wedded Bliss, and 1 Year of Kidding Ourselves”

Those of you who have been around the block here, know that I love to travel. And that I get a little whiny when we haven’t gone anywhere in a while. This was quickly becoming an issue in our house, as I was starting to get the itch again. But there is still a global economic crisis. And we have a toddler who taking to a beach would be pure hell on earth because there was no way we would be able to convince him that sitting on a beach chair and reading the Sandra Boynton collection all day would be a good time. Enter my parents, and their Disney Vacation Club membership. They had extra points this year that had to be used up. So, they offered them to us. And, I said yes faster than my mom could get the sentence out of her mouth. After consulting the husband’s calendar, my father and a very nice Disney cast member managed to find us a room September 18 - 23rd at the Boardwalk Villas.

So off we went. Three was a delight on the plane, he fell asleep about 20 minutes into the flight and slept through landing. Turns out The Husband was totally right about buying him a seat and traveling with the car seat (which we almost left in my car at JFK, oops!). We arrived at the hotel with no issues. After the husband took a short break to make a couple work phone calls (and I tried not to murder him for working THE SECOND WE GOT TO THE HOTEL) we were off to lunch and our first trip into EPOCT.

For those of you that don’t know, EPCOT is a quick walk from the Boardwalk. This ended up being really convenient as we figured out pretty quick that in the evenings Three went from having a blast to being THIS close to throwing a major “I NEED to GO to bed NOW, WOMAN!” tantrum in about 3.3 seconds. As a result, we never managed to see the fireworks in Magic Kingdom because we didn’t want to subject a busload of people to his freak out, and ended up spending all our nights in EPCOT - never making it to the fireworks. But, all was not lost, as our Standard View room had a fabulous view of the EPCOT fireworks, so was I mollified.

Anyway, I had wanted to make this short, so here are some highlights:

-Three dancing and clapping along to the British Invasion. I love that act in the UK Pavillion so much, The Husbands original Proposal idea involved them, but sadly, it got rained out. Maybe that was a sign?

-Three’s first haircut at the Main St. Barbershop in the Magic Kingdom. I was really sad to see his hair get cut, but in the end, he is actually way cuter with the shorter hair (again, The Husband was right, damn it!) and the whole experience was fabulous.

-Three LOVING the Tomorrow Land Transit Authority so much he had to stand up on the seat and turn around so that he could see where we were going.

-Three wandering around Sea Base Alpha every night, and getting a huge kick out of the fish. (mental note: we need to take him to an aquarium).

-Three being far more entertained by the fire hydrant sprinkler and the make believe city streets in Hollywood Studios than he was by anything else in that park.

-Attempting to get our picture taken with Lightning McQueen and Mader from ‘Cars’, and Three’s refusual to look at the camera because he was too bust trying to look at their engines.

-Three having a blast with any all water fountains, but especially the ones in Downtown Disney.

-The husband’s overly romantic toast with the Rosa Regal in Italy. The quote is the title of this post.

-Three finally leaning to wave!

-Three LOVING getting into his stroller at the start of every day. He learned really quickly that getting the stroller meant going somewhere fun.

-Watching Illuminations with The Husband on our balcony every night. A nice moment of peace and quiet and togetherness, something we don’t get much.

Before we went, we got a whole lot of comments about how crazy we were to take Three to Disney while he was so young, yadda, yadda, yadda. And while we were there, we saw people with kids much younger than three, and I was kinda like, yeah, I wouldn’t do Disney with a 4 month old. But with Three it was great. He was old enough to be engaged in the moment with what was going on around him. It was obvious he had a great time. There was built in entertainment, which meant I didn’t have to figure out what to do with him all day. Nor did we have to worry about his behavior. He was shockingly well behaved (even with the 2 teeth he cut while we were gone) except when we had our big fancy dinner. Even there though he wasn’t that bad, and frankly at Disney they are used to and prepared for it. Made it all a tad bit less stressful for Mom and Pop!

Three is not going to remember this trip (except in the thousand pictures we took!). The Husband and I will. And it will make me smile.

Now with full frame goodness!

Can you guess where we spent the last week?

I’ll give you a hint. It is in fact a small world after all.

And now that incessant song is in your head too, we can continue on.

I have many cute stories to share. And I will share some of them. Eventually. I think.

But in the mean time, lets take a moment to appreciate my new toy. Momma got a new camera. And its wonderful. And full frame. And came with the best lens I have ever owned. And the picture above was taken with it. By the husband. But there are 1000 other photos from our trip that I took. And now that it has been out of its box for a week, I can’t wait to start taking some photos that aren’t snapshots with it. Because while the camera was a joy to have in Disney, this is not a camera for snapshots. Its a camera that really should give me a kick in the ass to decide once and for all if I am going to throw my hat over the wall, or if I am going to continue to sit here and do nothing.

Time will tell.