family time Archives - Page 3 of 16

Mar 5, 2013

The Most Magical Place on Earth

March 5, 2013 By Christina

I was somewhat quiet in the social media world last week, and with good reason. After months of planning, saving and waiting, we packed up the kids and drove to Florida so our daughters could have their first experience at Walt Disney World.

It was the first time we’ve been on a week-long vacation as a family, and the first full week of vacation I’ve had in nine years. Aaron and I had spent a day of our honeymoon at the Magic Kingdom, then for our one year anniversary we spent a week at the Disney World Resorts. The second trip wasn’t quite as much fun as we expected because I was newly pregnant with Cordy at the time, and spent the entire trip with morning sickness (24/7 sickness, really). I was unable to eat anything and generally had no energy to do much.

Back then we had dreamed of coming back to Disney for our 10th anniversary, and bringing any children we had with us. So last year, around our 9th anniversary, we discussed it and decided we’d try to make it a reality for 2013. Our anniversary is in March, but the pitfalls of getting married during spring break is that you can’t travel anywhere warm for anniversary trips without crowds and higher vacation fees. But the end of February was close enough.

This time we stayed at Port Orleans – Riverside in one of their new Royal rooms.

This was the building our room was in.

The rooms are decorated as if Princess Tiana had made the room up for the other Disney Princesses, including a note on the table welcoming her royal friends to stay with her. There are hidden elements of all of the princesses in the room, from Cinderella’s mice and Aurora’s three fairies in the border along the top of the walls, to Ariel’s fork and pipe (dinglehopper & snarfblat) in the shower curtain design, and even the sink faucets looked like the genie’s lamp from Aladdin.

The cool part was the hidden surprise in the bed headboards. Pressing a button gave us a magical fireworks lightshow in the headboard – it’s no surprise that the kids wanted to press the button several times every day.

Sleeping under the LED fireworks.

We visited all four parks while we were there, with two days spent in Magic Kingdom. Seeing the dropped-jaw looks of amazement from our daughters as they saw Cinderella’s Castle for the first time and met their first characters made tears come to my eyes. To them, this was a dream come true.

The castle lights up in different colors at night.

The rides were also a hit for all of us. Thanks to a special card we got for Cordy (more on that in the next post), it was possible to ride every ride we wanted to without Cordy having an anxiety attack from standing in a long, tightly-packed line.

There were a few rides Cordy refused to ride, and a few that we coaxed her onto and then she refused to ride again. Cordy’s experience of Disney World was mostly what we expected it to be: she didn’t want to leave home, then she was anxious about every new experience once we were there and didn’t want to leave the hotel room each day, and then at the end she didn’t want to leave Disney. “I don’t want to…” was most often heard from her during the entire trip, but we expected this.

On the bus to Hollywood Studios – Cordy loved riding the bus and the monorail.

Because of her autism, she’s an awful grump about doing anything new, which means she complains and whines throughout the entire experience, then tells us later that she liked (most of) it. It’s a good thing we have some understanding of how her brain works and know how to compensate, or otherwise we would have felt like this was a horrible trip for her. She did have a few moments where she felt safe with a new experience and really enjoyed herself. And of course we went back to the rides she liked as much as we could so she could really enjoy them the second time, now that she knew what to expect.

Finally! A hat big enough for Cordy’s head!

Mira, on the other hand, threw herself fully into Disney with the force of a five-year-old typhoon. She was determined to see and do it all, and even if her feet hurt she wouldn’t complain for fear of leaving the park early. She had an agenda of what she wanted to accomplish, including rides she wanted to go on and characters she wanted to meet. Other than riding Space Mountain (which we convinced her was probably too intense for her) she checked off everything on her list and then some. As we rode the bus back to the resort each night, she usually leaned against me and fell asleep fast.

Mira LOVED meeting Stitch. They’re two of a kind.

Whenever anyone asked her what her favorite part of Disney was so far, she always replied, “Everything!!” And I’m fairly certain she meant it, two exclamation points included. She loved everything about Disney World. Even if she did figure out that the characters were people in costumes. When we met Cinderella at the Magic Kingdom on Thursday, I joked that we’d see her in less than an hour in her castle for dinner. Mira gave me the “are you serious?” look and said, “Or maybe it’ll just be another Cinderella.”

During the fireworks, Tinkerbell flew out of the top of the castle directly over us. I pointed to her and said to the kids, “Look! Tink is flying past us!” and Mira then responded, “I think she’s really using a zipline.” Despite her clever mind, Mira was still willing to put aside her rational thoughts to fully enjoy each character meeting, though.

I have no idea what secrets they were sharing.

As for Aaron and I, it was fun to experience Disney as parents. I went to Disney as a child, and we went together before we had kids, but this was our first trip seeing it through their eyes. It was definitely more exhausting, and we were at the mercy of their wake up times and energy levels, but it was still a fantastic experience.

My mom and aunt were also along on the trip (they stayed off-site and spent most of the week seeing other places in Orlando) and they watched the kids for us for two evenings so we could have a nice dinner and spend some time riding rides together without the kids. It was a good balance of time with and without the kids.

We topped off the trip on our last night there with dinner in Cinderella’s Castle with the princesses. What better way to end our vacation than by seeing the inside of the castle and visiting with the princesses one last time? I had my own surprise for everyone, too. In the weeks before our vacation, I had secretly ordered a custom cake to be delivered at dinner that night.

Sorry for the dark photo – it was dark in the room at that point.

It was gluten-free for Aaron, with a design that was reminiscent of our wedding cake and a flavor that matched one of the tiers of our wedding cake. It was so gorgeous no one wanted to cut into it! A tenth anniversary cake in the castle at Disney World – perfect end to the week, no?

The morning that we started for home, there were tears from all of us. No one wanted to leave. Before we had even left our resort, Mira had already started asking when we could come back again. We agreed we didn’t want to wait another ten years to come back, and that maybe we could begin slowly setting money aside for a repeat trip in a few years. (Once we finish paying off this one!)

I know there are many people who are cynical about Disney, but I can’t help getting caught up in the magic. Yes, it’s all designed to get you to spend money, but I never feel cheated in handing it over. It always feels like we got our money’s worth and then some. Disney works very hard at providing a unique experience that goes above and beyond any standard theme park, and for us they were completely successful.

It was a magical vacation.

More to come on what attractions we liked best and recommendations if you’re planning your own trip. I wish Disney had invited me to write about our trip, but this wasn’t sponsored at all, as my Visa card can attest. We really love Disney that much.

Filed Under: family time, love, memories

Feb 19, 2013

Weekends Aren’t As Much Fun As They Used To Be

February 19, 2013 By Christina

I remember loving three-day weekends when I was younger. As a kid, it felt like a nearly endless time of playing, with no schedules to keep, staying up late, and plenty of time to watch cartoons.

Even once I was in the working world, a three-day weekend meant an extra long weekend of fun, relaxation and sleep. Sometimes we’d go on a trip somewhere, but most of the time it was just extra time to be lazy, hang out with friends, and have a TV-watching marathon.

Or take a long afternoon nap, like this bear at the zoo.

I occasionally miss those days.

Now weekends in general are “chore and errand catch-up days” and a three-day weekend is a challenge to get as much accomplished as possible while also fending off children who may say they like weekends, but in reality prefer the structure and routine of the weekdays. I can only be their cruise director for so long before I’m out of ideas. Sadly, “let’s fold and put away the towels” isn’t a game they enjoy all that much.

The past three days involved little extra sleep or fun. There was lots of cleaning to be done that we can never seem to get to during the week. Lots of laundry, too. Haircuts for the kids. And grocery shopping. See all of the FUN we’re having?

Then we put new tires on one of our cars in preparation for our upcoming anniversary trip. Both of our cars need new tires, but only one gets the prize at the moment. (Tires are EXPENSIVE!)

You know that little trick they tell you to check tread depth, where you stick a penny into the tread upside-down, and if all of Abe Lincoln’s head is showing it’s too shallow? You could probably have seen his top hat with our tread, should he have been wearing one. It’s no wonder that the tires had trouble gripping the road, even on clear, dry days.

We know how to live it up on long weekends, yo.

And if all of that wasn’t excitement enough, our Saturday ended with a bang. No really, it was a loud bang as our garage door opener broke it’s hinge and the part that runs along the ceiling came crashing down into our garage as I tried to raise the door. One part shattered, with pieces found everywhere, including wedged into the door hinges.

Even though it was a holiday, garage door repairmen are available on Presidents’ Day. So Monday was spent waiting for the garage to be repaired. $135 later, we have a working garage door again.

At this point I think I’m ready to trade in my adult membership card for a weekend of acting goofy with friends and sleeping until noon.

How was your three-day weekend? (Or regular weekend for those of you outside of the US?)

Filed Under: daily life, family time, growing up, holidays, home

Feb 13, 2013

Nightmares Feeding On Mom Anxiety

February 13, 2013 By Christina

Do you ever have those dreams that are so real that you wake up startled, disoriented, and trying to determine if it actually happened or if now, awake in your bed, is the true reality?

Now what about nightmares?

My sleep was disturbingly interrupted by one of those nightmares this morning. This one was worse than many because it didn’t involve any danger to me, but instead to one of my children. And unlike other bad dreams where I can wake and realize any danger was highly unlikely and improbable, this one involved a very real scenario that left me shaken and unable to go back to sleep.

In my nightmare, Mira died. It was a very life-like situation: she wasn’t with us (I can’t remember if she was at school or with family) and she choked on a bit of hot dog. The horrific scene played out where we received the news, and then planned her funeral. I remember sobbing that I’d never hug her again or see that impish smile. I tortured myself with “what if?” – what if she had been with me that day, what if she had only picked a different food or someone had cut up the hot dog better for her, or what if I had never encouraged her to like hot dogs? I remember walking into her room and seeing her favorite stuffed animals on the bed, and I was overcome with grief.

And then I woke up.

Terrifying, right? It took me several minutes to calm my breathing, wipe the tears out of my eyes and realize I could hear Mira arguing with her sister downstairs, perfectly healthy, perfectly alive. My mind was still on fire with the false memories from the dream, trying to push them aside and write them off as fears conjured into a hellish scenario for my brain to process.

The half hour remaining before my alarm went off was useless. I tried to go back to sleep, in the hope that more sleep would erase the lingering images from my mind, but the danger had been laid out for me and I couldn’t stop thinking about what I needed to do to prevent this from becoming a reality. After all, I had just bought hot dogs for Mira at the grocery last week after she asked for them – was this some warning, or just my mind arranging a random collection of thoughts and memories then taken to the extreme end?

I do occasionally worry about Mira choking. The kid is a talker – an excessive talker – and that includes while she’s eating. I’m often reminding her to chew and swallow, then talk. How easy would it be for her to accidentally inhale a piece of food?

And the concept of choking is one I’m personally familiar with. When I was five or six, my babysitter had given me some of the candy orange slices as a treat. (You know, the thick, sugared gummy-jelly wedges?) I was so happy to get them that I inhaled them. Literally.

I ate the first two without any trouble as I looked out the back door, trying to finish them so I could go out to play, but when I popped the third one into my mouth, it accidentally slid too far back and got stuck. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t yell for help. I remember the confusion and then the panic as I tried to cough or swallow to dislodge the candy. My babysitter was two rooms away and I didn’t think I could make it to her.

I walked from the kitchen to the living room, starting to hit myself in the chest, begging my lungs to work as I became light-headed. I remember stumbling over the rug (her rug had tripped me on many better days as well) and landing with my chest on the arm of the couch. And that did it – the candy popped up enough for me to cough it out. My throat burned as I gasped for air.

My experience could have ended far worse, and to this day I still won’t go near orange slices candy. I know Mira has trouble focusing on any single task, so I guess it’s only natural that I’d have a nightmare about her choking.

The hard part now is getting the nightmare out of my mind. As parents, we only have so much control over our children and we can’t guarantee their safety 100% of the time. Letting a child out of your site, even for a moment, is trusting that you’ve surrounded your child with the safest possible world and the best teaching, and that they’ll remember what you’ve taught them.

But there is no absolute safety. There are always risk, accidents you have no control over, and dwelling on all of the what if’s will only zap all of the joy out of being a parent.

When I came downstairs this morning, I sat on the couch next to Mira and she immediately threw her arms around me and said “I love you, mommy.” I pulled her close to me as she nuzzled her face into my neck, and hugged her tight.

That was my restart for the day. Instead of thinking about possible danger, I’m choosing to focus on the great moments I have with my kids. Because if something bad should ever happen to any of us, I want to know that our days were filled with love and happiness.

If anything, the nightmare was a good reminder to notice the little moments of joy in each day.

This kid cracks me up.

Filed Under: being a mom, family time, love, memories, Mira

Jan 16, 2013

Finding Time

January 16, 2013 By Christina

We’ve been trying to find a new routine around here since the start of the year. Aaron is back to full-time at work, which makes all of us happy, but with the new position he has to be in the office every day, with no chance to work from home. Not too big of a deal, except that his office is a loooooong commute and he has different hours. So he’s gone early in the morning and home much later.

This has required me to rearrange my schedule as well. I’m now the one getting the kids onto the school bus, and I’m always the one picking them up from school. Since he gets home so late, it falls on me to do a lot of their homework with them, too. Housework, working out, errands? I get to them when I can, which means not very often. I’m grateful that my job is flexible enough to accommodate working weird hours when needed. That’s one piece to the puzzle that we don’t need to worry about.

I’m not resentful that I’ve had to take on more of the kid responsibility lately, although I’m finding it harder to make everything fit into the hours we have available. And I worry that Aaron doesn’t get as much time with the kids now, possibly an hour to an hour and a half before their usual bedtime. (which includes dinner)

Waking up earlier would probably help me get a better start to the day. But I’m not a morning person at all. In fact, talking to me before I’ve had the chance to fully wake up yet generally goes poorly. I’m convinced that gravity is twice as strong in the early morning, when it takes tremendous effort to drag myself out of bed and get moving. Non-morning people will know precisely what I mean.

On the other hand, Cordy has always preferred to go to bed early. It wasn’t so bad when she was in kindergarten and falling asleep at 6:30pm. She has always set her own early bedtime, and previous attempts to push it back never worked. (Mira is super flexible on bedtime, although she still wakes up early no matter what time she goes to bed.) Cordy springs out of her room wide-eyed and full of energy at 6am. If it wasn’t for the obvious family resemblance, I’d swear she was switched at birth because I have no idea how it’s possible to wake up so…awake.

But now Cordy is in second grade and has more responsibilities and homework. She stays up until 7:30 most nights now, and seems capable of staying up most nights until 8pm. Her homework takes up a portion of the evening – her spelling homework alone can take half an hour to finish. Staying up until 7:30pm is an improvement, but still limits our available time to get anything done when there’s only an hour to an hour and a half of full family time together.

If we try to have the kids stay up later, Aaron gets more time with them, but then Aaron and I have practically no kid-free time together before he falls asleep on the couch and then stumbles upstairs to bed. (He’s up for the day at 4:30am many days.)

I’m sure we’ll figure out a new routine that works, but there may be some rough days ahead while we find what works best. Getting more done would be nice, but I’m more concerned that the kids feel they’re getting enough of our attention – both of us – while I still get a little time with my husband without a child wedging herself between us to tell us all about her favorite Skylander.

And now for the interactive portion of our show: I need your help. I want to know your routine and if it works well for your family. How late do you let your kids stay up? (and ages, please) Do you or your spouse (if you have a spouse or sig. other) only get to see the kids for a very short time in the evenings before bed? If so, how do you/your partner maximize your time so the kids feel like they’re getting enough of your time? Is someone in your family not getting enough of your time? I’d love to hear how others make the parent-working-late situation work for them

Filed Under: daily life, family time Tagged With: advice from readers

Jan 9, 2013

What Happens When Your Furby Becomes Evil

January 9, 2013 By Christina

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Mira had one toy that kept coming to the top of her list: a Furby. Other items on the list would change, but a pink Furby was always there for anyone who asked, including Santa, who got an earful about how much she really wanted a Furby.

So when Christmas arrived, she was overjoyed to get a hot pink Furby from Santa. (Cordy got a blue Furby, too.)

Now, there are a few things they don’t tell parents about the Furby. First, it has no off button. At all. The only way to immediately silence it is to take out the batteries, which requires a screwdriver. And you know that right when you want it to shut up is the same time that all screwdrivers in the house go missing.

Otherwise, you have to wait for it to fall asleep, or force it to go to sleep by placing it in a dark, quiet area and ignoring it. Once it’s asleep, you mustn’t move it or bump it at all, or it will wake up again.

The Furby also has no volume control. At all. It’s loud all the time. And most of the time it speaks Furbish, which seems to be some kind of cross between baby talk and pig latin.

Basically, it’s the toy equivalent of a colicky baby.

I did know some of this going into our purchase of this toy. But I did not know about all of the enhancements from the previous 1998 version. The LED eyes are cool and provide the ability for more expression of personality. It has more sensors to detect touch. And it can change personality.

The old Furby would have some change in personality based on how you treated it, but this one goes far beyond that with a multiple personality disorder. It has several very distinct personalities and doesn’t come with the Furby anti-psychotic drugs it desperately needs.

Mira’s Furby started out as the furry hot pink version of a valley girl. A little annoying, but kinda cute. She fed it on demand and used the iPad app to translate what it was saying, and it slowly learned a little English, too. Well, a version of English better suited to the movie Clueless, perhaps.

After the second or third day, it had the first personality shift. I didn’t see it happen, but suddenly it was speaking like a cowboy and mooing at us, with chicks and cows appearing in the LED eyes at times. Mira found that hilarious and I suffered through the noise because she liked this toy so much.

The next day it was back to a valley girl again, and even seemed to name itself Coco. It gave itself a name? It was becoming more sentient with each passing day.

And then, in the middle of Mira trying to teach it to dance, something very bad happened. It started to shake back and forth, it made weird noises, and it’s LED eyes were flashing like strobe lights. I thought it was either having a grand mal seizure or we broke the damn thing.

Furby, mid-panic attack

Then it stopped. All was silent for a moment. And then what was in front of us was a Furby who no longer had the high-pitched girly voice, but instead a deep, growling voice with angry looking eyes.

Coco isn’t here anymore.

Mira’s Furby was suddenly possessed by a new personality who was mean. It growled at her, it snapped at her with an angry voice if she tried to pet it, and it made retching noises when she tried to feed it, as if the iPad foods weren’t good enough for it. Occasionally it showed little flames in its eyes.

WTF happened? Did we feed it after midnight?

It was now a Furby demon. And Mira was scared of it. She backed away with tears in her eyes, her five year old mind unable to comprehend what had happened to her cheery dance pal, saying she wanted her nice Furby back, and she didn’t want to play with it anymore.

So her new electronic pet wasn’t working out as well as she wanted, which means it was now my responsibility to care for. Figures. I felt like I had brought home Chucky from Child’s Play to my daughter.

Sorry for the dark photos – it apparently has a feature that prevents paparazzi from getting good photos of it, too. Little bastard.

So as I sat there, with Damien the Dark Furby glaring at me from across the room, I did what any good mom would do: I googled “How to make a Furby nice again?”

I can assure you I’m NOT alone in this type of google search.

There were a lot of suggestions about different things to try. I gathered up the little ball of hate and tried petting the dumb thing several times. I will hug you and love you until you are sweet again! It growled and yelled at me each time while my dog stared at me in confusion, wondering why I was petting a loud toy instead of him. Yes, Cosmo, you’re smarter than the humans. Still no change from the Furby. I was a little worried it might try to bite me.

Mira was still across the room, asking me to make it nice again, but too afraid to come near it. WHO MAKES A TOY THAT KIDS ARE SCARED OF? What programmer thought that a sociopath personality would be a SUPER FUN for kids? I’d like to drag that person over to our house and let him/her console my five year old and explain the reasoning for this.

Then I remembered Mira really wanted her Furby to sing and like music. Some links suggested music can change the personality. So I put it in front of the iPad, cranked the volume, and subjected the little electronic Lucifer to Owl City followed by ABBA. He growled and hissed at this musical exorcism at first, but slowly started to dance along to the music. You know, that grudging, too-cool-for-school-kid dance where he doesn’t want to admit he likes Mama Mia.

Near the end of the second song, the Furby’s eyes flashed and it shook again, and suddenly the pop star personality appeared. This one has a softer voice than the valley girl and likes to sing a lot. Let me repeat: A LOT. And instantly, all Furby offenses had been forgiven by the formerly terrified kindergartener. Mira had been hoping her Furby would sing and ran across the room to scoop up her prized possession now that it was no longer, well, possessed.

Stupid Furby.

Since then it’s slipped back to the dark side once, which then fell to me to fix again. Music does seem to be the trick to force it back to being a “nice” Furby again. Mira loves the pop star personality – hers named itself Boo – which is the least offensive personality as far as Furby personalities go.

Aww, isn’t she sweet with those hearts in her eyes? That’s how she lures you to your DOOM.

Cordy’s Furby hasn’t changed personalities once. It prefers to be a valley girl/comedian hybrid and doesn’t want to change.Which is both annoying and OK, all at the same time. I’d rather deal with devil I know rather than the devil it might become.

Luckily, the hours between Furby playtimes have already stretched into days. I’m hoping they will eventually lose interest with these gremlins before my personality changes.

This has to be my mother’s revenge for the Teddy Ruxpin I adored as a kid, right? Only it’s revenge with 30 years of interest. I’d better start planning for the next generation now.

Or the Furby will enslave our Skylanders to do what it commands with it’s sweet, chipper voice and I’ll be doomed forever.