Anniversary Vacation!!!

January 13 marked our five year wedding anniversary. We made a pact when we got married that each year on our anniversary we would go someplace warmer than where we currently were. For the most part we stuck to it. Last year was the exception since we had a 5 month old baby at home.
This year though, we made big plans! In the past we have visited our friends in Tampa and visited one of the major FL theme parks while we were there. 2007 we went to Magic Kingdom, 2008 we visited Sea World, 2009 I was in Texas for school, 2010 we skipped and this year we visited Universal Islands of Adventure...specifically to see the Harry Potter exhibit!
Instead of the usual extended weekend trip we decided to stay a whole week and take Dill with us! Traveling with a toddler was an adventure to say the least!
We had planed to stay in FL from Jan 20-26, but mother nature had a better idea. She dumped snow and ice on Baltimore and 'stranded' us in FL for an extra 2 days!! It was *just* awful... yeah, even I can't say that with a straight face. Considering we were staying with friends and not in a hotel, it wasn't any added expense for us. We did have a rental vehicle, but the extra time was next to nothing.
We had an amazing trip. Harry Potter was the best exhibit at a park I have ever seen. The attention to detail was incredible. Is. of Adv also has a Dr. Seuss area for kids that Dillan just couldn't get enough of.
He went on his first ride, The Cat in the Hat, and really enjoyed it. He also rode the Caroseussel. He was too small to do much else, but was mesmerized by all the sights and sounds of the rest of the park.

Flying can be a daunting task in itself, but adding a toddler to the mix creates a whole other world of things that can go wrong. Luckily there are some amazingly helpful women on the Traveling with Children board on Babycenter. After taking note of all the advice we decided to travel as light as we possible could. Unfortunately this still meant taking the car seat (we bought D a seat for safety and we'd need it in the car in FL), the lightwt stroller, 2 medium suitcases for Mike and I (putting everything in one would have put it over the wt limit for Southwest), a small suitcase for Dill, the diaper (book)bag, small carry on for me, Mike's carry on, portable/ fold up booster seat (we could have done without this, but it was nice to have), and a small soft cooler with juice and snacks for Dill. It wasn't too difficult to get through the airport once we checked the 3 bags. We had the car seat strapped to the stroller, the cooler on the handles, the feeding chair (which was Mike's "personal item") in the basket, and our carry-on in the car seat. Mike wore the diaper bag and I wore Dill in our Ergo. I have to say that when traveling with kids, a carrier is a MUST!!! Made things in the airport, at the park, and just about everywhere we went soooo much easier!!
We rented a mini-van at the airport since we would have 4 adults and 2 kids in car seats with us most of the trip. Enterprise gave us a Dodge Grand Caravan which was nice, but reconfirmed that I will NEVER own a minivan. The sliding doors were handy and it had lots of storage, but that's about it. Everything else about it was a pain in the butt!

To be continued...

Holiday Wrap-up

It's February?? When did that happen????
I'm really starting to hate this whole "getting older" thing. Time seems to move much faster than it did when I was in my teens and twenties. Christmas is a distant memory already, even though the temperatures have forced the outside decorations to stay up at our house. 2010 came and went.
Let me recap:

• Thanksgiving- Pretty calm this year. Mike and I cooked at home and had a nice quiet meal together. I was excited about Dillan being able to really enjoy his first Thanksgiving meal but he wanted nothing to do with it. After dinner we visited with my aunt and her family for a little while. They hadn't seen Dillan since before he turned 1 so it was fun for them to see him running around and interacting.

• Christmas- I have been much better about starting the decorating process early. This year I had the house decorated by the first week of Dec. With D being a very active toddler, climbing everything, we vetoed the use of our giant artificial tree in favor of a smaller (easily contained) real tree. I was very excited since I hadn't had a real tree in at least 6 years. We found the perfect little tree at Home Depot. Ornaments presented a challenge as most of the ones we own are either heirlooms or are very breakable. Nothing a quick $20 trip to Walmart couldn't fix! I bought an assortment of non-glass, shatterproof, ornaments for our tree. After setting up the tree we had to finagle some Super Yard panels to keep Dillan from undercoating it. In the end it worked out great. We had a cute little toddler-friendly tree just the right size for the space we had available.
  The holiday season not only means shopping and decorating, but also the realization that there is too much to do and too little time. We vowed that this year we would not do all the running around on Christmas day and we would really enjoy the day with Dillan. The only concrete plans we had were to see my father on the Christmas Eve, as has been tradition every year since before Mike and I started dating. We also accepted an invitation to dinner at my aunts house. She hadn't had a big family dinner in a few years but this year her kids were really insistent on hosting one. Plans to see Mike's family were, as usual, up in the air. It was decided the week of Christmas that his family would be gathering on Christmas Eve because of his brother's custody arrangement. This inadvertently excluded us from the family Christmas altogether. Though he'll never tell his parents (men, sheesh) my husband was hurt by this. I think he feels left out a lot and I know that sometimes he feels that he is overlooked because there's always some other drama going on.
  We visited with my dad on Christmas Eve as planned and I'm sooooooo glad we did! Dillan really shined! He wasn't the shy, clingy kid he usually is in crowds. He was running around and had a blast operating my dad's train set. Even though he was the only kid under 20, he didn't care. He was such a ham!! For the first time in his life he let my dad hold him and interact with him. I almost cried when I saw them playing together. I know it meant a lot to my dad too.
  Then my dad surprised Dillan with his very own train set (thank goodness he wasn't scared by them like last year!) for under our tree.
  When we got home from dad's I got Dillan some dinner and ready for bed while Mike visited a friend's annual Christmas eve gathering. While he was gone I prepared the present I wasn't supposed to buy him! We agreed no gifts since we were going to FL for a week in Jan to celebrate our anniversary. I couldn't resist though when I saw the VERY specific watch he's been wanting for 10 years on sale...cheap! I wrapped it in Dillan's toy mailbox as a "special delivery" from Dillan and Santa. .I thought I'd be proactive and start assembling and wrapping all of Dillan's toys. I had the idea to wrap them in tissue paper so he could easily rip it off. I learned it's very difficult to wrap large angular toys with tissue paper! I also forgot to get batteries. Doh! No worries though, Mike grabbed them on his way home. We got everything wrapped and set the train up under the tree and made it to bed just before 3am!
  
   

 

• Christmas morning was fun. Dillan wasn't too into opening his gifts but he did love the puzzles and toy kitchen. Mike was really surprised by the watch and a little fake mad that I got him something when I said I wouldn't.
  We had dinner at my Aunts and again Dillan was an angel! He was having a ball playing with my Aunt and cousin and it was really nice to be able to sit with the grown ups and talk. After dessert we packed up and headed home. We took the long way around the beltway to stop at Mike's parents house. We had hoped to catch his brother and their twins, but like Dillan, they were ready for bed. D was pretty maxed out and wouldn't eat. He just wanted to cuddle and cry. We did a quick Christmas with them and finally made it home. Everyone was sound asleep in no time.

• New Year's- We visited Mike's twin nephews on NYE. D had a lot of fun playing "with" his cousins. More accurately he had fun playing with their toys lol. He loved the play house w/ slide and almost immediately gravitated towards their kitchen. After dinner we got all the kids together to color a card for the grandparents. We spent most of the afternoon into the evening hanging out before going home to watch the ball drop.

Between Nov and Jan we also went to 2  friend's 1st bdays. I don't have the energy to write about those!

Com-mun-i-cate

Verb- to express thoughts, feelings, or information easily or effectively.
Sounds simple enough right? Not when your 1 and the language you speak seems to be completely misunderstood by everyone around you. Luckily toddlers learn to use 'our' language so we know what the heck they're trying to tell us.
Dillan has been learning more words; he knows mama, dada, up, down, Dora, dog, ball, cat, apple, tickle, and can make the sound of a cow, sheep and pig...though thanks to Sandra Boynton his pigs only say "la la la".
He also says more, milk, please, "go go go", NO, bye bye, yum, and map.