Thank You Really Much

 Grandma took us to a really cool children’s museum which was once an old firehouse. Each room was furnished with a different theme and there were tons of hands on activities. We all had a blast. “Thank you really much," Matthew said to Grandma when we were leaving.

Matthew and I made homemade wheat pancakes for breakfast the next morning. We spent the rest of the day playing outside, doing a painting craft, and catching up on yard work.

Make Way For Ducklings

This has been a soggy and gray spring. Originally the plan was for the seven of us to take trip to the zoo, but on Monday the forecast called for scattered showers so we changed our plans to a trip to the Children’s museum instead.

Earlier that morning Matthew went off to school and Bob accompanied me to an ultrasound appointment.went great. It went great. Samantha weighs an estimated four pounds and two ounces. The tech said she already has some fuzz on her head too. We got to watch her opening and close her mouth too.

After the appointment, Bob went back to work, and I picked Matthew up from school. We met up with our friends for the planned trip. Lucky for us, our friend Lori was able to borrow a giant Mercedes from her family’s dealership which fit us all (three adults, three four-year-olds, and an eleven month old) in. The kids thought it was the greatest thing in the world and made a racket each time we went though a tunnel or under a bridge.

The museum was a lot of fun. Matthew bounced from room to room with his buddies to try as many activities as possible.

Four!

Matthew turned four today.

He already has these ideas in his head about sleepovers and tasting chewing gum.

“Wake me up at noon, when everyone gets here,” he told us the night before his birthday party.

Instead of sleeping until noon Matthew decided his time was better spent awake. “Today I am a little four and tomorrow I’ll be a big four!” he announced. The three of us spent the morning playing and getting prepared for the party. Eventually it was noon and people started to arrive.

Bob and I didn’t see much of Matt or each other during the party. Matt spent a lot of time outside with his friends, and Bob and I were busy being attentive hosts to all of our guests. The party went by fast!

The memory I’ll treasure most from the day was when we settled in to read books before bedtime. Our neighbor had given a set of books geared towards teaching young children to read. Imagine our surprise when Matthew began to read the first book out loud to us, taking the time to sound out words that were unfamiliar to him. We didn’t know that he could do that yet.

The birthday fun was not over yet. I still had to decorate cupcakes for his school. Matthew had requested hockey cupcakes.

Tonight Bob, Matthew, and I had our own birthday celebration. Bob brought home food from one of his favorite restaurants and after dinner he opened his presents from us. Then the three us went to Friendly’s for ice cream and spent the night relaxing and playing with his new toys before tucking him into bed.

Tower Of Tinga - Disney World Trip

“Today is a special day,” Matthew announced to passengers while our plane was landing, “It is my first time on a plane.” People laughed the same as they had when we were taking off and he exclaimed, “Whoa!” as the plane climbed higher is the sky.

He informed me of three things while we waited in airports that day. One was that the sign in the bathroom stall was “weird”. The sign prohibited the flushing of tampons down the toilet and he pointed it out to me, “No flushing ChapStick down the potty?” Secondly, he reported that once we got home my belly would crack open and his sister would come out. Lastly, as we waited for Bob to get the keys to our rental car he told me, “I’m shocked to be in Disney.”

Throughout the vacation the three of us could all agree that we were shocked to be here and on that same note we never wanted to have to go home.

The next morning we went to Magic Kingdom in time to line up at the gates before it opened, and passed a sign for The Tower Of Terror on the way there.

“That’s the Tower Of Tinga!” Matthew exclaimed. “It’s a scary ride!”

We don’t know how he knows about the ride but he seems to know a lot about Disney that we didn’t teach him. One day he summed up the plot of the movie Bambi which neither of us has seen with him before, “It’s the movie where his mother gets dead and he makes new friends” and during our monorail ride to Magic Kingdom he looked out the window to the castle and asked, “Is there a princess in there waiting for a kiss?”

The opening of Magic Kingdom was worth the half hour wait in line. Characters arrived on a train to the front of the castle where we were welcome in the form of song and dance.

Once the gates opened our first destination was Tomorrow Land where we went on the Space Ranger spin ride, the first three of six times that day.

“I hate you Zurg!” Matthew shouted each time he shot at Buzz’s nemesis. At the Buzz Lightyear themed gift shop located (conveniently) at the exit of the ride he picked out a Buzz laser toy, “This is mine because I’m Buzz Lightyear and I saved the day.”

Next Bob and Matt rode a car around the speedway. At the end of the track the car in front of them had shut off so they were instructed to bump it to push it to the exit area. They told me it was exactly the same as the movie CARS when Lightning McQueen backs up to push The King over the finish line.  

We went on the People Mover after that. Then it was time to stop for a snack where Matthew saw a walking and talking trashcan. For the most part he is well mannered, so Bob and I were surprised to see him walk over and kick the trashcan.

“I asked if he wanted to play Buzz Lightyear,” he explained once we scolded him. He then made things right by going back to hug the trash can. 

We met Buzz Lightyear next. For the rest of the trip Matthew refused to allow any other character sign his autograph book. Buzz’s stamp which to Matthew was a ceremonial marking between space rangers is on the first page.

We saw a couple shows, Monsters Inc Laugh Factory and a Mickey Mouse 3D show. “Remember when Donald Duck came out of the screen?” Matthew asked us on our second trip on the People Mover just ten minutes from the time we saw it.

Three more rides we went on were It’s A Small World, Pirates of The Caribbean, which was my favorite from when I was a child, and the Jungle Cruise. That night we stayed for the firework show. When they played the song, “When you wish upon a star” I asked what Matthew was going to wish for. He told me he was going to wish for Disney.

“Tinkerbell made a wish for me to go to bed at nine-three-three,” Matthew said when we were leaving the park. We took the ferry back to the parking lot which was not cold or crowded as I thought it might be when Bob suggested it.

The next day we went to Hollywood studios. The Toy Story Mania game drew the largest crowd there but we managed to ride it twice. Matthew discovered that he enjoyed maps as much as his dad and for the rest of the trip the two of them separately consulted their maps before we would go to the next destination.

“I make rules that are not on the map,” I said to Bob hurrying him as he stalled to eat Combos while we are walking into the 3D Muppets show. Official snack stops complete with hand sanitizer are the jest of these rules that I spoke of.  

Many of our destinations had to do with loud explosions having to do with fire; Indiana Jones, the Studio Backlot Tour, and Lights, Motors, Action. We were worried the fire would scare Matthew, often reminding him that it was only for a movie. “Ohh, movies,” he said in awe rather than fear during one particularly big explosion.

We ate lunch at the official Pizza Planet and then found seats to watch the Pixar Parade. “I love you Buzz!” Matt shouted as he passed us.

We met Lightning McQueen and Mater that day as well. That night we stayed to watch the laser show Fantasmic. To our dismay Matthew insisted on wearing a poncho due to the light mist of water which hardly sprayed the audience during it. Speaking of princes, I asked everyone what their favorite memory of the day was while writing things down to remember for this blog and Matthew said, “You can write, I love you.”

“Mommy?” Matthew asked me during breakfast the next morning, “What is this place called?”

“Disney,” I answered but he shook his head, his face thoughtful. “Florida? Number 106?”

“A hotel,” he answered his own question.

We headed off to Sea World that morning. I was looking forward to this all week because it has always been my dream to touch a dolphin up close. Matthew and I got to feed them while Bob stood a safe distance away with the camera. We also fed seals and high fived sting rays.

Matthew rode his first real rollercoaster. “I really don’t like this,” he said at first to Bob. “This is a little bit scary.” Then finally, “That is awesome!” They went on three times. 

We went to the Shamu show next. “I see their underwear!” Matt giggled when the whales jumped out of the water.

“Everything has gone according to our plan down to the minute,” Bob told me on our way out of the park.

“He wasn’t happy before because he didn’t know me yet,” Matthew said hugging his new stuffed seal he named Mickey.

That evening we did some shopping at Downtown Disney before heading home to catch a few hours of sleep before our early flight home the next morning. 

We could not have asked for a better vacation. 

Winter Mayhem

This has been one of the snowiest winters in years. The snow plows passing our house lost their appeal to Matthew storms ago. We’ve been trudging through the days playing countless games of Hi Ho Cheerio, going on outings to the library or a hockey game, sampling our hand at making snow candy, shoveling out a snow fort, and making valentines. 

During one particular snowy afternoon Matthew invented “The Stair Game”. He instructed me to name a color (Example yellow) and he would pretend the stairs turned into something of that color (“Whoa, banana peels!”). He has also invented a number of games involving three things he learned about in school: Power Rangers, Star Wars, and Transformers.

Once at 3 a.m. he appeared at our bedside yammering, “Are Transformers good guys or bad guys? What about the one that Josh has? Is that a good guy?” 

This week I’ve begun to feel the first few baby kicks. When I told Matthew this he put a hand on my belly and then fell to the floor. “Oof. The baby kicked me and is really strong!”  He alternates between tender moments like his own idea to paint the baby a valentine or tickling my belly to tickle the baby and some not so affectionate moments like asking us to make a sign that says ‘No babies in your belly allowed’ to hang on his door.

The full sign read “Nobody allowed. No babies in your belly allowed. No monsters.” 

Truthfully, I think he will make a super big brother. He already has the cape. 

Everthing Old Is New Again

“Oh my gosh!” Matthew can’t not believe the hi-jinks that Frog and Toad get into.  “Look at him, he lost a button! There is a snake over there; it is going to eat them? Is it a friendly snake?”

For years I tried to introduce him to Frog and Toad, literary friends of mine from childhood, but he rarely listened to more than the first paragraph before his eyes would glaze over from boredom. Now that he is older the paragraphs of text make sense to him and hold his interest in between pictures of moss and taupe colored protagonists.

This was the first New Years Eve that we let Matt stay up. Earlier in the day we had friends over for sledding, lunch, and making New Years Time Square balls. 

And in other news to share I had my first official ultrasound of the new baby this week. “That’s a monkey!” Matt said when I showed him the pictures.