Disney Cruise continued

I don't know why I never have time to sit and write these days, but dang it, I'm going to keep trying. June was puking all night so I'm home from church with her today. She's napping, so a blog update seemed appropriate. As a side note, she was the best little puker I've ever seen. No crying or noise, she would just sit up stoically, grab the barf bowl and start heaving. During one particularly sad bout in the middle of the night, I rubbed her back as she was dry-heaving and helped her hold the bowl. She didn't make any sound, but one lone solitary tear made it's way down her cheek. How precious and heartbreaking! Thankfully the throw-up has stopped, but she's still quite hot with a fever. I'm nervous to give her medicine because I don't want her to throw it up.

Back to the Disney Cruise!

 Soft serve ice cream anytime was a highlight of the pool deck. They had a new special flavor each day in addition to the chocolate/vanilla twist. My favorite was the mango. This was definitely the best way to vacation with children. Too excited to eat breakfast? No problem, we could just grab food anytime they felt hungry from the many eating options up by the pool. It was nice not to worry about forcing them to eat a big breakfast because we'd just paid for it or we didn't know when we would be stopping for lunch. Lots of days they would get hungry around 10 a.m. and I'd just go grab them something a few yards away while Ryan played with them in the pool.

There was lots of napping because we played pretty hard. We enforced naptime big time and the girls didn't complain. Beyond our bed is a privacy curtain and a bunk bed. In the daytime, the bunk bed becomes a couch, but at night the room service pulls down the top bunk and makes the couch bottom into a bed. We would put the girls to bed and pull the curtain and it worked like a charm.

Meeting Elsa and Anna. It was very impressive and I love how they stay so well in character. Of course, the lighting is set up in each of these pictures to get a killer shot if you are the official photographer, but for the rest of us we had to be satisfied with bad lighting and not great pictures. And since it was pretty expensive to buy the ship photos, I decided to be satisfied with my not so great ones.

The were happy to meet Olaf too, but wondered where Kristoff and Sven were.

Meeting Pirate Minnie. Willa was very excited meeting the characters. It was so cute. I think maybe June was napping or in bed when we did this photo.

As a last minute fluke (long story), my parents ended up with my brother and niece who were unable to go. What to do with two already-paid-for tickets on a Disney Cruise? We invited my Aunt Debbie and cousin Kephren. The best Disney lovers of all. It was an unexpected treat to have them along. It was pirate night for this photo.

The first day, you go and get special tickets (the tickets are free, but you have to know to go get them) to see some of the princesses. The princesses are there at other times, but with the tickets you don't have quite the line. June had a matching Cinderella dress and glass slippers. She still talks constantly about meeting Cinderella and how that Cinderella had gloves, but is it okay if she doesn't have gloves?

Rapunzel was a big treat too. The next day we were sitting down to eat dinner in the restaurant and Rapunzel walked by and stopped for a minute to wave at the girls through the window. They were in heaven.

 And of course, Belle.

We worked to coordinate princess dresses and swimsuits with Presley. It was fun having another little girl cousin.

Willa LOVED to go to the kid's club on board and I was majorly impressed. The kids all wore wristbands that they scanned when they entered. When I would come to pick Willa up, they would scan my room card and tell me exactly which area she was playing in! They had areas with Ipads, a sitting area that played little Disney shorts, a slide area, art, and more. In addition to all the independent activities, they had group activities that the leaders would do scheduled regularly. Like, once they pretended to go on a magic carpet ride all together and stopped along the way for lots of adventures. Or they would bring out dress ups. Once I specifically took Willa because they were going to have story time with Belle, but when I picked her up later she had been so distracted playing the individual games that she didn't even participate in that one! You could leave the kids in as long as you wanted, but we didn't take Willa that often because we wanted to swim and do other things together. The nice thing was is that they would serve meals at regular mealtimes if you wanted to eat without the kids. A formal restaurant at the end of the day was a little tough on the girls, so one night we took Willa to kids club instead.

The kids club was only for kids 3-11, if your kids were younger, they had a nursery option. I asked several people beforehand if they might let June go to kids club with Willa since she was only about six weeks away from turning three. I think maybe several years ago they might have let it pass, but now things were much stricter. And with the chip in the wristband, the computer wouldn't even allow them to check June in. The main reason I didn't want to do the nursery was because you had to make reservations and it was $9/hour. Neither of those things are horrible, but I like flying by the seat of my pants and if suddenly we wanted to drop the girls off or sleep longer and not go somewhere, I didn't want to be left in a lurch. If you didn't keep your reservation, they still charged you for it. Well, I was very pleasantly surprised with the nursery too. The staff was so nice and if I got there early and they had an opening or if I wanted to change my reservation ahead of time, it wasn't a problem. We ended up only taking June once, but I was impressed. They had a bunch of cribs, so your babies could nap. You could bring all their lovies and toys and food for them, and they also served snacks and food regularly. The last day of the cruise I got a manila envelope delivered to my room. Inside was a cute card from the nursery thanking June for visiting them. It included pages of drawings and artwork that they did with her, including a couple of adorable finger painting sheets, and some photos of her there. It was definitely worth the money and I wish we would have used it more.

Disney Cruise, Day 1

Last Christmas, in 2014, my parents' gift was that we would all be going on a Disney cruise the following year (January 2016), to celebrate their upcoming 50th wedding anniversary. It was a pretty big gift, notwithstanding it covering two Christmas's worth of gifts. So we had a year to look forward to it. I probably told the girls more details about it sometime in the Fall. I sat down with them and looked up some youtube videos of Disney cruises so that they could get an idea. They were very excited, even though I still don't think they really knew what to expect.

The ship was leaving Friday at 4:00 pm, so we all ended up taking a red eye with a layover on Thursday night. Not the funnest two flights of my life. The girls were troopers, but I expected that they would sleep the entire time. No such luck. We actually bathed them on Thursday night, got them dressed in their clothes, and put them down for an early bedtime around 6:45 pm, or so. Then, we woke them up around 9:00 pm when it was time to go to the airport. Neither of them slept at all for the first leg, which was about a 3 1/2 hour flight to Detroit! They just couldn't get comfortable and maybe having them sleep before messed them up. I thought about doing Benadryl, but sometimes I feel like it doesn't really work on them (especially June), and if anything, it messes up their sleep. So, I decided to chance it we had to live with the consequences. Here they are after the first leg, waiting for the second flight. Happily, they fell asleep before takeoff on the second flight and slept the whole time.

Then, we took a little shuttle bus to Miami, where they slept a little more. But still nowhere near the kind of sleep they usually get. They were pretty good troopers, all things considered.

Waiting to get on the ship. Willa and Ryan were too tired to come get a picture. June came by virtue of the fact that she was too tired to do anything but have me hold her. Still, we were excited!

We packed swimsuits in our carry-on so that we wouldn't have to wait for our luggage before enjoying the pools. It was a rainy first day, but the hot tub felt so nice. 

June's taking a last look at Miami before departure. There was about a two hour golden period between swimming and dinner, which would have been perfect for a nap - except that the muster was schedule smack in the middle. June slept about 30 minutes on the couch before we had to pick her up and go, poor baby.

The rest of the day was kind of a tired blur. We were scheduled for dinner not long after the muster. I think all 27 of us were feeling exhausted because the servers asked if we were grouchy :). The girls barely made it through dinner without major meltdowns. A formal sit down affair is risky, even in the best of circumstances. We put the girls (and Ryan) down around 7 pm (4 pm, Vegas time!) and then I met the rest of our group who was still awake to watch the opening night show, which was so much fun. It was a tiring, but great start.

Little girls

Man, oh man, I'm going to have my work cut out for me with little Junie. I've been working on blogging about the cruise, but I've got to take a break and first post a couple of hilarious (and sneaky!) things she has been saying and doing around here.

She's very bright, but her intelligence might not always be directed in the best manner. She keeps me on my toes with the knowledge that she scrapes up, though. A few weeks ago we were taking about bathing suits in the car and she somehow told me that you could also call it a bathing costume, like Peppa Pig!

Last week, I was playing with her and let her sit at the harp for a few minutes. I showed her how to play a glissando and said the word just once or twice to her. The next day she wanted to sit at the harp again and without any prompting said, "Mommy, is this the biggando?" She just remembers things so sharply. Weeks after we had turned our passport documents into the post office, she offhand asked if we had our "pasaports for our trip."

Again last week we were driving in the car and my lane started to slow down. She asked me what was happening and I told her we were slowing down. She said, "Oh, are we going 'Dagio?" I didn't quite understand her so she said again, "'Dagio, like in my Einsteins!" Ha ha, "Yes, Junie, we are going Adagio." Then she gets this kind of self-satisfied smirk that I can hear in her voice and says, "Yes, 'dagio means slow."

On Saturday morning she and Willa were playing really well, but after a while Willa wanted to play by herself which is totally normal, but June was pretty upset about it. She kept wanting to go in and I said, "No, we need to leave Willa alone. She wants to be alone right now." Well, a few minutes later I was cleaning up the kitchen and June comes in all innocent holding a hair rubber band and said, "Oh no, Mommy, we need to put this away! We need to put this in the bathroom and clean up!" Well, the sneaky girl knew that the bathroom is attached to Willa's room, so if she could find a reason to get into the bathroom, she would get to Willa's room. What a sneak! I could barely keep myself from laughing at that one.

Finally, I wouldn't be surprised if this queen bee ended up being a Mean Girl in school. We joke that there is a little nursery squad going on (like Taylor Swift's squad). When I dropped her off at nursery yesterday, Ryan was with me and asked, "Who is that girl hugging her?" I looked and saw another girl, Quinn, who hugged her and then showed off her dress. According to Quinn's mom, they show off their dresses to each other when they get to nursery each week! Sometimes when I ask who she played with she will say, "Quinn! And no one else!" She actually is friends with a lot of the little girls there, but it's funny that she and Quinn have developed this ritual where they hug and then show off their pretty dresses to each other.

Well visits

I was tidying up and came across the girls' well-visit papers from this past December. I love looking back at this sort of information about them. Willa was having her five year checkup, and June was having her 2 1/2 year.

Willa
5 years
Height - 43 inches, 52nd percentile (though, I think she's had a growth spurt since this, because   suddenly her dresses are much shorter on her)
Weight - 41.6 lbs, 57th percentile
Blood pressure - 92/52

June
2 1/2 years
Height - 36 3/4 inches, 52nd percentile
Weight - 26.1 lbs, 17th percentile
Head - 48 1/4 inches, 45th percentile

Two healthy girls. The doctor heard a faint heart murmur on June, but she said it sounded textbook like a Still's murmur, which is a heart murmur that occurs in two year olds and has no side effects. Children usually outgrow it pretty easily. We'll double check at her three-year check up and if it sounds differently we can send her in for more testing. The doctor wasn't worried about it and I'm not, but sometimes when I pick June up and she's been really emotional (tantrum, or maybe running), I can feel her little heart beating so quickly in her chest. I don't think anything is wrong with it, it just makes me think about her and our bodies a little more.

The doctor also suggested that I needed to make Willa use the bathroom more often during the day and that would help her stay dry at night. At the time of our visit, Willa was currently just going twice a day - at lunch and before bed. She always woke up with a wet diaper, so I didn't press her into going in the morning and sometimes at lunchtime she would fight with me about going because she didn't want to. The doctor thinks her bladder is stretched out so she can't really feel whether or not she needs to go and then it just kind of leaks out during the night. So now I'm being more vigilant about making her go several times a day, in the hopes that over the next two or three months the bladder will shrink up and she will be able to hold it overnight. We'll see. The doctor thinks it should help and says that most kids her age are dry through the night (heck, June is dry through the night), but I come from a family full of late bed-wetters on both sides so I didn't think it was particularly strange that she still wet the bed. In fact, it's kind of nice because her and Claire are both a little embarrassed about it, but then kind of relieved that they both still use diapers when we have stayed the night.

Christmas!

I'm behind posting everything because we've been gone on our amazing DISNEY CRUISE!!! That's all I'll say about it right now. First, I must post about Christmas.

We had a nice quiet Christmas Eve with just us. It was still sweet and special and fun with the little girls. I was planning to have hamburgers because I thought the best Christmas gift I could receive was having no one complain about dinner, boo yeah. At the last second I decided that hamburgers weren't quite special or exciting enough since we have them about once a week (see previous comment on no one complaining about dinner). So I ran to the store on Christmas Eve, got some bread bowls, and made a creamy soup. The girls turned their noses up for about 30 seconds, then got a kick of eating soup out of the bread bowl, filled up mostly on bread, and we all left the table happy.

Christmas Eve

 We talked about the Savior's birth and then read the Polar Express, which was a family tradition of mine growing up. We put the girls to bed, but then got them up two minutes later to allow them to open one present on Christmas Eve, which was one of Ryan's family traditions. It was very fun.

Santa doesn't wrap presents at our house. Here is what it looked like when Santa finished. When the girls woke up, they played with their Santa gifts for a while, we ate breakfast, and then opened the wrapped presents. It's a nice way to extend the morning. The girls were pretty happy about their lot, June was going crazy about having her very own princess water bottle (it attaches to the front of the scooter). She's happy that her water bottle came with a scooter :).

 Willa got a scooter, the new Elephant and Piggie book, Anna's coronation gown, and a bow and arrow toy that we had seen at a store earlier in the month and that she loved. June got her scooter, a Peppa Pig playhouse, some play dinosaurs, and the book Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs because she has been obsessed with the t.v. show. Then they each got a slinky, which might have been the best gift of the morning. For me, it seemed a little small, but other years I feel like we've been overwhelmed with stuff so we wanted to try and keep it to a minimum this year. Once they opened their wrapped gifts, it seemed like a good balance.

Breakfast is over! Now for the presents.

Playing with new gifts.

 

Rebecca and Brandon came for Christmas dinner. We also had the Collins family come over. Bobby Collins went to high school with Ryan and he and his family just moved out here with the AF to work at Nellis. We didn't get a photo of everyone, but it was a nice Christmasy gathering. They have two little girls who are two years old and about five months. It's weird to be the one with older kids (though mine are just a tad older). Seeing them was like seeing us two years go.

Rebecca brought her gifts over that evening and Willa was ecstatic to unwrap the last My Little Pony to complete her collection and ROLLERSKATES! She went wild and gave Rebecca a big hug. Here she is the next day skating around. They are just the beginner ones that go over her shoes, so the skating isn't great, but she has been wanting some for soooo long. And I just realized that this isn't an actual video clip. It's the image of a video clip. So just imagine.

Park with friends

Willa has made some cute friends at preschool. After our last day of school before the break, we arranged for a park play date.

They are pretty cute together. There is a park at the community center where the lucky kids with nice moms get to run around and play together after school pick-up. I resisted for quite a while, but Willa's incessant begging wore me down. For better or worse, we go almost every time now. Ideally, I'd just like to get home and put June to bed, on the other hand, I wanted Willa to have more friends and this has helped that. Out of the four girls in her class, three of us usually play at the park after, so I think important to let her have that unstructured time with friends. I only wish we could stay longer. I'm usually the first one to leave because we really do need to get June down for a nap. If it wasn't for that, there have been beautiful days and it would be nice to just be able to stay out as long as we want. Still, it's a nice chance for us to stretch a little if the rest of the day's schedule doesn't allow for something else fun later on.

The Nutcracker

I got tickets for Willa, Rebecca, and I to have a little girls' afternoon out to The Nutcracker at the Smith Center in December. I've wanted to take Willa for a while and thought this year she might be old enough. It was a lot of fun! She was a tad on the young side, but sat on my lap and was very attentive as I whispered some of the plot details to her. It was really good, my only complaint was that the Mother Ginger costume didn't have all the kids hiding inside. How could they not to that? It's iconic!

As soon as we got home, she changed into her leotard, had me put on some Nutcracker music, and started leaping all around. It was so cute.