Against all reason, we took the kids to Hawaii the first week in March. Bolstered by the fact that Ian had done so well on our long car trip over the summer as well as the last couple flights we had taken, we figured we’d go full bore and stick him on an eight hour flight over open water.

I’m not freaking out, YOU’RE freaking out

This largely sprung from Maya’s infatuation with Moana. I vaguely recall some conversation, probably over cocktails. Ha ha, wouldn’t it be great if we could take Maya to a tropical island and get her out on a boat like Moana? See if we could spot a dormant Te Fiti from afar? Do it before she’s old and cynical like us?

Little did I realize at the time, but Sean took what I considered an offhand notion and started looking into hotel costs and airfare. Oh, and he found a way for Maya to meet Moana. The Venn diagram in Sean’s brain has a big section where lifelong Disney love, the desire to make magic for his kids, and a long-nursed impulse to relocate to Hawaii overlap. This overlapping section is neatly colored in by the Aulani Disney resort on Oahu.

A view from a room …

It’s not a theme park. It is instead a sprawling resort along the beach that also has several pools, a lazy river, splash pads, lots of kid-friendly activities, and Disney character meet and greets. Once I realized our vacation was on, I tried negotiating. We could stay in the swank resort half the time and at an AirBNB the other half of the time, right? No, evidently we could not.

I kept at it too. All the planning that I did revolved around things *not* at the resort. We had half a mind that we might rent a car one day and drive up to north shore to tool around in “actual Hawaii.” Maybe on our last day there, we’d head over to Honolulu and be tourists. In the end, we spent very nearly our entire time on the property and were never at a shortage for ways to pleasantly fill our time.

As mentioned, once we decided we were willing to shell out for the vacation, the toughest hurdle to overcome was the flight. We left on a Saturday. The quick hop from Austin to Dallas was no problem, of course. The long flight from Dallas to Honolulu tested our mettle though. Things got off to a glorious start with a nearly hour-long delay, spent on the plane. I knew it was going to be rough when, before we had even taken off, Ian had already peed once and asked if we were at Hawaii yet a handful of times.

We have a standard configuration when we fly: Ian and I in a window and middle seat in one row and Maya and Sean in a window and middle seat directly behind us. This time, each of us had a sleeper in the aisle seat. Masks on, headphones in, conked out. Great, right? Not so much if your kid decides he needs to urinate every hour. Even Maya, who has a giant bladder, forced Sean to wake up the lady next to him a full four times. And it’s not like they were drinking much (I was actually worried about how little they were drinking). Also, neither of them really slept. Ian had a fitful hour of sleep maybe a couple hours before landing. Before that, he had been a squirmy pill. After that, he was a crying, squirmy pill.

As with most things, we eventually made it though. Usually, it takes us AGES to get out of an airport. This time, we were only about an hour from the time our plane pulled up to the gate to the time we were exiting our shuttle at our hotel, luggage in hand. It was amazing.

We told her we would swim the next day. It was literally less than 5 minutes before she was soaked.

Maya and Ian (especially Maya) were complete lunatics by the time we got in. The plan (the dream, anyway) was that the kids would sleep too much on the plane and that would be fine because it was four hours earlier in Hawaii than it was in Texas. Oh well. We managed a quick dinner and a walk down to the beach before giving up and calling it a night. I think we were all asleep before 8:30p local time.

On our first full day in Hawaii, we just let our internal clocks wake us. Ian managed to sleep till 7:30, if you can believe that. I was up just before 6 and Maya around 6:30. We had a harrowing period from 3:00 to maybe 4:00 where Maya had woken up and tossed and fidgeted, but she eventually went back to sleep.

After a quick breakfast at one of the on-site cafes, we went to sign the kids up for Aunty’s Beach House, the resort’s answer to child care. The basic stay and play was covered with our room rate. Some extra activities were also covered, and some required an extra fee. We signed the kids up for some of each. After that, at long last, we got the kids into the water. They had an absolute ball. Ian enjoyed floating along the lazy river with me. Maya fussed and fidgeted over her flotation, effectively un-lazying the river for her and Sean.

The kids both enjoyed swimming in the big pool, with its warmer water and zero entry. They goggled up, put on life vests, and motored around as they chose. Maya practiced jumping off the wall and swimming to us, again employing her level identifiers to signify varying styles and degrees of difficulty. Surprising us all, Ian ditched his life vest and free-swam for a few feet between Sean and I over and over again, barely pausing for breath between iterations.

MOANA!!!!!!

Eventually Ian was shivering and Sean was uncomfortable, so we ended our swimming and hurried to get dried off and dressed for a visit with Moana. It’s interesting the way these Disney folks have it set up. We could call a number each morning and find out where and when the kids could meet different characters, and if it was relevant, we could sort of plan our day with those things in mind.

Maya dressed for the occasion. When she met Moana, she told her all about her Te Fiti shirt and her Moana shoes and her little brother Ian. She chatted about how much she loved Te Fiti, and Moana of course agreed. We took lots of photos and the kids both received very nice hugs.

Later on that afternoon, we stopped by to see Moana again, just so Maya could snap a photo of her with her own little Polaroid camera, which Moana then graciously signed. Maya had also brought Moana a big leaf to use as a boat for Hei Hei the rooster. Basically, Maya was on cloud 9.

MINNIE!!!!!!

We chanced a visit with Mickey and Minnie Mouse because they were so close by. While not as committed as his sister, Ian does nurse a pretty big soft spot for Minnie. She had on a pretty dress and pretty shoes and was doling out some pretty sweet hugs, so Ian was happy. Mickey actually played with them a bit, hunting for leaves as pretty as the ones the kids had brought for him.

Later on, with exhausted, exhilarated, un-napped children, we took a crack at an ohana (family) hula. By that point, Ian really only wanted to be held and Maya just couldn’t resist adding her own flair to the dance. I think Sean may have been the only one who got to dance it properly.

At the kids’ repeated request, we went and had Mickey Mouse shaped shave ice. Ian got an ear, Sean got an ear, and Maya laid waste to his entire head. She was a red-fingered, sticky-faced, shivering mess, but she was a happy one.

We tried to then wander over to the fire pit to hear Uncle tell us some stories. Uncle was an engaging and dramatic story teller, and Sean and I could have kept watching for a while. Unfortunately, Ian was busy running through rows of chairs and trying to weave plant leaves through tabletops. Maya was busy fussing about being bored or not liking the smell of the fire. Lucky for us, Moana showed up toward the end to help Uncle tell his stories about Maui and that at least garnered some of Maya’s interest.

Beautiful sunset

After a rather long, drawn out dinner with an admittedly beautiful sunset, we took the kids to our room for a quick bath and a long sleep. Sean and I, after a bit of planning, were not far behind them.

On Monday morning, we had our first big-deal event planned: character breakfast at Makahiki, the buffet restaurant at the resort. It was easily the best meal we had eaten thus far. Sean had gotten the kids an autograph book and ink pen with the specific intention of collecting up the characters’ autographs, and this was their first chance to use it.

Mickey, at the character breakfast

The character breakfast started with a corral past Mickey Mouse to have photos taken with him. The kids’ buffet was right up front with Mickey waffles and what turned out to be Maya and Ian’s favorite: chocolate muffins. The kids also tried out and loved POG (passion-orange-guava juice). Minnie and Pluto stopped by their table and spent some time signing their book and taking photos. The kids were invited by Aunty to follow along in a sort of conga line through the restaurant. They donned fish puppets as they walked along and then played a coconut shell instrument along with Aunty and Minnie Mouse. We took our leisurely time, relaxing by the koi pond and nibbling on all manner of breakfast treats.

Character breakfast

Eventually, we moved our well-fed selves over to the open house at Aunty’s Beach House, so the kids could get a look at things before we left them there later in the week. As predicted, they didn’t want to leave. (We later found out though that this was because we were there with them.)

Ian decided he loved the water!

Afterward, we got swim-suited up and tried out the Menehune Bridge, which was sort of like the splash park part of the property. There were some really great slides there and lots of intricate and well-themed structures to climb and play on. The kids had a lot of fun, but it was cold with the breeze, so we pretty quickly relocated to the main pool. Even there, after an hour or so, Ian was all a-shiver, so we gave up and went inside.

We all loved Stitch

Everyone had had a pretty early morning and we were all still full from breakfast, so we actually headed back to the hotel room for a nap. Rested up and marginally less grumpy, we headed out to visit Stitch, Donald, and Daisy and collected more autographs and took a few more photos. Stitch in particular was very huggy and the kids adored him. Maya confirmed that yes, Stitch was still good, just like he was at the end of the Lilo and Stitch movie. We had to briefly visit Moana again so that Maya could give her a picture she had drawn for her.

Moana’s autograph featured a heart-of-Te-Fiti swirl

We went for ice cream and treats as an afternoon snack to tide us over till dinnertime. I discovered “Dole Whip” pineapple ice cream. Maya had a packaged ice cream bar and Ian had part of a cookie and some giant sprinkles. Sean enjoyed a pina colada doughnut.

The kids had been after us all day to go back to Aunty’s so they could play some more. Since we had an hour or so to kill before dinner time, we figured we’d let them give it a try.

With the kids safely tucked away, Sean and I took a walk to a nearby shopping center. We stopped by an ABC store and got some packaged cereal, milk, and POG for breakfast the next day, and some pineapple wine for us to try out. We tucked the cold items into the mini fridge in our hotel room, whose temperature setting turned out to be “arctic” and so it froze most of our stuff. We found out later on that evening that while it did not freeze like the other stuff, the pineapple wine was not really our thing.

We were just walking back to fetch our kids when the nice folks at Aunty’s called us to let us know that Ian was ready to see his family. Maya, predictably, cried when we had to leave.

After a too-long pizza dinner, we changed into jackets and pants and headed out to the big lawn area to spread out on woven mats and watch Toy Story under the stars. After a fun trivia game and a not so fun video hawking the Disney Vacation Club, the movie started and it turns out we got to see … Coco!

Sean and I were excited. I love the idea and aesthetic of Dia de los Muertos, and that particular holiday was central to the story. Maya, on the other hand, was disappointed. She has a difficult relationship with movies. She gets very caught up in the fates of the characters and worries and has cried through many of the movies we’ve tried to watch with her. Toy Story was something she had seen before and wasn’t nervous about, so she thought that would be fun. Instead, she got a movie she had NOT seen before and like all good stories, it wasn’t all sunshine and daisies. She cried through most of the movie. Then she cried some more at the end because the happy parts were over so quickly. Ian, for his part, had to pee once during the show and at the end was starting to get fidgety. But, the movie was great, and getting to watch it outside on a mild spring evening in Hawaii was not a terrible way to see it.

The next morning, we saved a ton of time, money, and frustration by simply having a breakfast picnic in our hotel room.

The whole family’s gone crazy. Ok, maybe just Maya.

Since we had had such action-packed days on Sunday and Monday, we decided to take it a little slower today. We took a long walk along the ocean-front path, peeking down at tide pools and big white waves and soaking up the sun and breeze. The kids were all excited about the infinity pool at the resort, so we got suited up to give it a try. Holy WOW was it cold. Probably, I’ve just gotten old and particular, but I couldn’t get out of that water fast enough. It took quite a while for us to coax Ian in, and once Sean carried him over to the edge to peek out at the ocean, it was no problem getting him back out again. Even Maya was ready to get out once we promised her we could go over to the warm pool the kids preferred to play in.

We all took another spin through the lazy river, because Ian couldn’t stop talking about how much he liked it. Maya again did her very best to un-lazy it. Ian on the other hand was braver this time through, actively seeking out opportunities to get splashed by waterfalls and fountains instead of avoiding them. From there, Sean and Maya went down some gigantic water slide in their tubes that Ian was too young for, and reportedly, Maya giggled the whole way down.

Science is serious business

After this, we dried off and ate a quick lunch. The kids had some iPad time as a means to rest and unwind a little since there wasn’t time for napping that day. After that, they were off to their afternoon outing at Aunty’s – Stitch’s Space Goo. On the way over, Moana happened to walk past us, and she called out, “Hi Maya!” Sean and I were stunned. We looked at Maya and said something along the lines of “Hey Maya, Moana knows your name!” To which she responds, “Of course. I told her my name.” Yeah, just like those long lines of other kids did. As Sean says, Maya is memorable, even to Moana.

Once the kids were dropped off, Sean and I sat at the beach bar and had an Ace Pineapple beer/cider thing. I didn’t care for the pineapple wine, but that cider was really good. During our remaining, post-cider down time, we wandered down to the beach to sign up for an ocean canoe ride the next day.

The kids both seemed happy when we came to pick them up after their event, and each of them had a plastic sack full of some kind of gack that they had created in a “lab” at Aunty’s. We were told that Stitch had come to visit them as well.

Pounding taro root to make poi

We quickly freshened up for the big event of that day, the luau. We had to wait for about 20 minutes to get in, and our un-napped, antsy children were all over the place bouncing around the other people in line and playing with the mulch, leaves, and dirt. On our way in, we received beverages and necklaces and were shown to our places at the big communal tables. We set down our things and made the rounds to participate in various activities. The kids pounded poi, and incredibly, they both tasted it! Un-incredibly, they did not like it. They did some traditional ink stamping on paper, and we all received “tattoos.”

I was prepared to be underwhelmed, but the buffet had some seriously delicious stuff. The Imu pork was incredible, the tuna and tako poke were both so fresh and flavorful, and the suckling pig was fantastic – doubly so once Sean found the crispy cracklin’ skins. Maya actually had me walk up with her at one point to get more of the pig skin, she liked it so much.

Just like in Lilo and Stitch!

The kids went to the bathroom several times each over the course of the evening, which was really great because each time, it required a walk to a not-so-nearby restaurant. Between bathroom breaks, they did manage to eat Moana cupcakes, participate in the keiki (kids) hula, and watch most of the show. Maya even managed to stay awake to see them twirling and throwing around fiery batons. She’d been looking forward to that part of the luau ever since she had made her peace with the Lilo and Stitch movie a few days before we left. Poor Ian missed the fire; he had fallen asleep by that point.

Since the breakfast cereal and POG picnic had worked so well the day before, that became our new standard for the rest of our vacation. The next day, after breakfast and a bit of play time, we took the kids down for their canoe ride. We boarded the boat and went “beyond the reef” and out into the open ocean. Ian nestled into Sean’s lap and largely refused to move, though later when asked, he told us he liked the boat ride. I had to keep a careful eye on Maya so that Ms Gung-ho didn’t dump herself into the ocean. It was a one-hour ride, perfect for the kids’ attention spans (the other option we had looked into would have put them on a boat for four hours). Maya even got to see “Te Fiti” sleeping off in the distance. She kept shushing us because she was worried we’d wake her, and we’ve all seen what she’s like when you piss her off (cough-Te Ka-cough).

That’s sleeping Te Fiti in the background

The guys working the boat filled our heads with Polynesian history, fun things to do in Hawaii, why we should own a boat, and (once they got wind of Sean’s desire to relocate) all of the wonderful schools available in the area.

Ian stuck close to Dad

We had already decided that today would be beach day, so once we were back on land, we borrowed a sack of sand toys and hunkered down to play. Earlier that morning, Sean had bought a waterproof cover for his phone, so he had fun taking photos of the kids (mostly Maya) playing in the ocean.

After a couple hours of sand and surf, we had lunch and headed to the room for a nap. After our nap, we all got cleaned up and went back to the beach to catch the sunset. Maya and Ian tried to draw pictures of it. Sean took a few photos, and the resort’s photo pass people tried to take photos of our whole family.

Family beach photo!

Then we ventured off property to have what turned out to be a really solid dinner at Monkeypod. Sean and I started our dinner with some incredibly welcome mai tais topped with this lilikoi foam that we’ve since sort of managed to recreate at home. Everyone’s food beautifully prepared, but a little difficult to settle in and enjoy with our wiggly kids. Afterward, we wandered over to an ice cream shop and let the kids have treats before a quiet walk back to the hotel.

The next morning after breakfast, we walked down to the pool to get photos and an autograph from the elusive Goofy. After that, of course, we went swimming again. Maya talked Sean into doing the big slide with her a couple more times while Ian and I played in the pool. Once Sean and Maya rejoined us, Ian again ditched the life jacket and swam, swam, swam between Sean and I for a long while. (He was a changed man when he got back to his swim lessons at Austin; they couldn’t believe how much more confident he was.)

Woohoo! Big slide!

Once the kids were good and cold, we put on dry clothes for lunch and then headed to the Haleiwa lawn to see the last characters that we hadn’t met yet. Maya used her little Polaroid camera to snap wonderful photos of Daisy Duck and of Chip and Dale. She is such a natural little photographer. It’s amazing to watch.

The characters posed for her and, when they had articulated fingers, autographed as well

We wandered back upstairs and let Ian have a nap. After that, we headed back to the beach so Maya could try out a boogie board and Ian could play with a giant connect four game that had caught his eye the day before. Maya managed to get up on all fours, and Sean drug her all around the bay. Ian decided the connect four game was pretty boring, so we borrowed more sand toys and played while Maya boogied.

Dad and Ian in the actual ocean!

We all zinged through the shower so that we weren’t quite so sandy for our Menehune Mischief dinner at the Makahiki restaurant. This time the kids were fitted with green paper crowns, and the corral took us past Donald Duck for photos before the dinner. Maya giggled and told him he was a quack-o-pus. Donald giggled too and waggled his tentacles for her.

Ian loved Chip and Dale (and no, I don’t know which is which)

At our table, we were visited by Stitch and by Chip and Dale. Chip and Dale in particular were a total crack-up, pestering the kids and being generally mischievous. The kids got to participate in the show a bit. Between kid-wrangling and getting food from the buffet, I didn’t really keep the thread of the story that Uncle was telling about the Menehune. Maya and Ian seemed to have a really good time though, and I ate some beautiful fresh seafood. Lots of ahi and tako poke. Lots of seafood on ice. Some slabs of pineapple with li hing powder sprinkled on them. It was a pretty swell dinner.

Aulani

Sean even managed to sneak out for a while once the kids were in bed so he could recapture his life as a childless photography enthusiast, quietly spending as much time as he liked composing shots and fiddling with settings on his camera. (It may shock you to know that Maya and Ian don’t have much patience for that.)

By Friday, we realized with some sadness that we would have to start picking and choosing which activities we could still squeeze into our last bits of time on the island. We didn’t really have time to fit much in between breakfast and the kids’ activity for the morning, so we let them play a while. The program they went to was called Fish are Friends, again at Aunty’s beach house. This was one of the ones we had to pay extra for. They learned about ocean creatures and then made food for the fish and went out to Rainbow Reef to feed the fish. After that, they had lunch.

Fish are friends (and food)

While all this was going on, Sean and I went souvenir shopping and had a quick bite to eat ourselves. No one called us about unhappy kids, and sure enough, when we picked them up, they were all smiles. They came out with Fish are Friends bags and blue ray discs and stories about what they spent their time doing that day.

Ian at Aunty’s

After that, Sean and Maya took a walk to the lobby to handle a few housekeeping chores while I coaxed Ian into a nap. After some rest and playing, we actually took them right back to Aunty’s so that Sean and I could enjoy a grown up dinner at Ama Ama, the fancier restaurant on the property. The food was really good. The fact that we were sitting outside and staring at the beachfront and water certainly didn’t hurt. The mai tais didn’t hurt either.

Toward the end of our dinner, the folks at Aunty’s called to let us know that Ian wanted to go home. We let our server know that our kids were wanting us, and bless her, she stepped up her pace from relaxed to zippy without even a change of expression. This allowed us to finish out our very pleasant meal, but still got us back to Ian in reasonable time, not that the folks at Aunty’s were rushing us.

What’s more colorful, Ian or Hawaii?

Saturday was a whirlwind of activity. We had done some of our packing the night before, but we spent a fair amount of the morning packing as well. We had sort of a “brunch” (read: we ate breakfast really late, so we made sure it was larger) to make sure the kids were fed early enough for their Kakamora Chaos program at Aunty’s.

Decorated her paddle with an octopus, of course.

This was the big one. Moana was there, and Maya was beside herself with excitement. When we picked the kids up afterward, they were each armed with a very sturdy paddle that they had personally decorated. Ian, naturally, immediately tried to hit stuff with it. A really neat souvenir, even if it’s a bit dangerous.

At my repeated request, we went and tried to take family ukulele lessons. Ian didn’t even want to hold a ukulele. Maya was wild and dangerous with hers. Sean, wonderful spouse that he is, wrangled the kids while I sat and played the ukulele.

Bye bye, Moana! I hope you visit us in Texas!

After our ukulele lesson, we snuck in one last ice cream and dole whip treat. Then we visited Moana one last time so Maya could say goodbye. We tried to take one last swim, but Ian almost immediately bailed on the idea because he was too cold, so it was mostly a Maya and Sean swim. After one final Hawaii dinner, we packed the last of our items up in a final bag shuffling frenzy and boarded our shuttle to the airport.

Bye bye, Hawaii!

Maya was in rare form by this point. She chatted up Jeff the shuttle bus driver, Eddie, the poor man behind is in line to check luggage, and several flight attendants.

Our flight was actually easier than the flight out had been, I think. Everyone had emptied their bladders pretty well before we left, so there weren’t many bathroom visits. We managed to get the kids a bit of fitful sleep, although it required us supporting them in such a way that neither of us actually slept at all.

Our connection was in Phoenix on the way back. We arrived early and had a reasonable layover, so we had time to at least try to eat breakfast. Ian was pretty all done with travel after the flight from Phoenix to Austin, but we made it through without incident.

As we drove our weary selves home from the airport, thoughts of Hawaii took on a glamour-shot haze in our sleep-deprived state. If we let our eyes de-focus a bit, we heard the ocean waves, smelled the mai tais, and saw Maya and Ian being carefree and playing, chattering excitedly to Moana and giggling at Chip and Dale’s antics. It had been a great vacation.

More Maya photos

I have my few personal quibbles with the way some of the things at the resort were handled, and it was maybe a little early in the year to be in the water as much as we wanted to be, but by and large, it was a very positive experience. The kids were so happy. They got to play in the water nearly every day. They met a pile of Disney characters while they were still young enough to believe in them. Vacation was pretty low-stress for us because there were just so many things to do, and they were all things we could walk to. And, even if we were in a somewhat manufactured vision of paradise, we were still firmly in paradise.

Our Christmas this past year was actually pretty tame by our standards. Not too many travel hijinks. No one vomited. All the gifts we bought for people made it more or less on time.

Merry Christmas!

But before that, we had a few “holiday” events. Early in December, we had a real snow. There wasn’t a lot of it, but instead of the icy sleet pellets we normally get, fluffy snow accumulated on the car and yard. I knew Ian wouldn’t be as crazy about it, but just in case it was gone by morning, we actually got Maya out of bed to come check it out. The next morning, they got to be a little late for school so they could have a few minutes tromping around the yard and making the tiniest snowballs.

Guys! I made a snow ball!

Maya and Ian had their Christmas recital at school and both of them performed admirably. Sean managed to take video of the performances so the grandparents could see their lunatic grandchildren in action. On the same day as the kids’ school recital, Maya had a piano recital. I was edgy about the stacked events, but it turned out great. Maya played her piece wonderfully and seemed to genuinely enjoy herself.

Ian rocking the school recital

We went to visit Santa at the swanky outdoor mall near us. The line was long and slow and the kids didn’t handle it well. But, once we finally got in to see the big man, Maya chattered his ear off. Ian takes a lot of cues from his big sister (good or bad), and decided that if she wasn’t terrified of this weirdo in the red suit who wanted to be sat on, then he wouldn’t be either. But he wasn’t going to talk to him.

Santa! I want an octopus! And an Audi!

Maya, who is intermittently interested in dance class at school, sort of participated in her dance recital later in the month. She was cute in her outfit, but it was clear her heart just wasn’t in it.

Our little travelers

Our travel plan this year to save cash was to book a round trip ticket between Austin and Memphis. From there, we’d drive three hours up to my family’s house in Missouri, six or seven hours from Missouri to Alabama and then the three hours from Sean’s family’s house back to Memphis when it was time to leave. All of the driving parts actually went pretty well given that small children were involved. Plus, Santa had brought the kids their very own suitcases, which they both loved wheeling through the airport.

The only travel hitch we encountered was on the airplane ride into Memphis. As with most flights, we had a layover in Houston. As I recall, we handled the plane change with no issues. Then we sat on our plane forever while flight crew and ground crew do-daddled. Then, to “fix” something, they had to shut down and restart the plane. Just like I “fix” my computer. When that didn’t work, they had us all exit the plane. We waited for a while in the boarding area. There was a candy store right by our gate, so we took turns letting each of the kids shop for some treats. We waited some more. Finally Sean gave up and went to forage for dinner. About the time he arrived back loaded down with our food, we were hastily reloaded onto the plane. We do our very best not to bring smelly fast food onto the tin can full of recycled air, but that day, we had no choice. All told, our flight arrived about two hours late.

Maya and Ian handled the weird delay … okay. I thought they were kinda antsy and were starting to get a little vocal about when the eff this plane was going to leave already because they were going to their grandparents’ house, but multiple flight attendants complimented them on their patience once we got to Memphis. Surprise kids! Now we have a three hour car ride!

We thought they’d have a little nap on the drive, and that would be okay because then they’d have energy to play with all of Grammy and Grandpa’s toys for a while before bed. Surprise parents! Your kids will stay awake the ENTIRE TIME and will be a leeetle bit sleep deprived and off kilter when you arrive at your destination!

Maya and Grandpa on the Mule

The kids generally love Grammy and Grandpa’s house. There are so many toys to play with and a big yard to run around in. Maya’s new infatuation though was Grandpa’s mule. It’s some kind of tractor like thing, and despite the cold weather, she wanted to ride it again and again. Ian did not seem too interested.

Ian and Grammy staying inside where it was warm

We have a big family, so there’s always a lot of celebrating. Honest to goodness, I had to write it down to keep track of where we were going to be on any given day. Christmas eve saw us having a smaller celebration with just Dad and Carol, my brother and sister and their spouses and kids. They had a lot of fun opening literal mountains of gifts.

This is a lot of people to get organized

Later that evening, we celebrated with Great Grandma Schmidt and all my aunts, uncles, cousins and their various progeny on the Schmidt side.

We celebrated with the aunts, uncles, cousins and their various progeny on the Stueve side at Aunt Sharon and Uncle Doug’s house on Christmas day. We let Maya take her iPad in case she got fidgety and it turns out that was a big draw for some of the cousins. Someone “accidentally” placed candy dispensers right at preschooler height, so Ian and his cousin Nathan had a fine time availing themselves of the sweets. Uncle Doug and cousin Dakota brought out fiddle and guitar later on, and Maya and Grandpa had fun dancing.

Is it gonna cuckoo soon?

We visited Great Grandma Schmidt for a while the day after Christmas and Maya learned all about the cuckoo clock. After it popped out once, she was riveted, waiting not-so-patiently for it to pop out again. We saw friends of mine from grade school that afternoon while Maya and Ian monopolized Grammy and Grandpa’s time.

On the 27th, we drove to Alabama. As mentioned, it was an uneventful drive and the kids were very happy to see Lolli and Pop and all their kitties at the end of it. Sean’s Aunt Sharon was spending the holidays there as well, and Maya in particular became very attached to her over the course of the visit. Aunt Darci and her kids were also in town, and AP (who is 8) was really nice about playing with kids so much younger than her.

Lolli and Pop!

The morning of the 28th saw full stockings and terribly excited kids. It was utter mayhem at stocking time. I tried to keep track of which goodies and gifts belonged to which kid, but it was hopeless. By the time they were done, there was nothing left but flattened stockings, a pile of loot, and four exhilarated children.

Maya telling Lolli all about the iPad

Later that day, we all went to the McWayne center to have some good run-around time and maybe some accidental learning. Ian rode the train with Lolli. Maya was mistaken for a seven year old while waiting in line to ride the zip line.

Ian and AP helping Pop test out his Rudolph nose

The next day was mostly about relaxing and playing together. The kids had tons of toys to dig into. The cousins played together some. We went out for pizza and ice cream. We’re nearly certain this evening was when Sean cooked his traditional shrimp scampi dinner.

We regularly found Maya glued to Sharon during this visit :-)

On our last full day in Homewood, we saw Darci and the kids as well as Aunt Sharon undertake their travels back to their respective homes in Northern Virginia and Knoxville, TN. Sean and Pop took the kids to some kind of bouncy trampoline type place so they could burn off some energy. We boxed up as many of the gifts as we could and shipped them back home.

New Year’s Eve had us driving to Memphis and flying back home. Other than me forgetting Ian’s sunglasses in the rental car, everything went as expected. That evening, I don’t remember the kids giving us too much trouble at bedtime. Sean and I did manage to stay up and split a bottle of really delicious champagne to ring in 2018.

Having a birthday so close to Christmas is tough. We work really hard to make sure Ian’s celebration is separate, but I’m not sure it always works. Since his sister had a party and invited her classmates, Ian wanted a party too. In hopes of having a few people who could actually attend, we celebrated a week early.

Our big 3 year old!

Ian is a lover of all things furry. It can be interesting playing in the front yard sometimes because he wants to hug all the dogs that walk past the house. There’s a big black cat at Lolli and Pop’s house named Baa-baa that will tolerate his hugs. We recently watched some friends’ guinea pigs while they were on vacation, and yup, they got hugs too. So, this year for Ian’s birthday, we hired a mobile petting zoo to come to the house.

It was great! We have a big open living room with a tile floor, so they just set up inside. These were little animals: chicks, rabbits, turtles, hedgehogs, a lizard of some kind – no big farm animals hanging out by the couch. The petting zoo people had little stools for the kids to sit on, little mats for them to hold so the animals’ claws didn’t bother them, hand sanitizer for when they were done.

Bunny!

Ian loved it. Some of the animals made him a little nervous, I think, but especially if they had fur, he was petting and snuggling away.

We talked a lot about what kind of cake Ian might like. It’s sort of difficult with our kids because neither of them care too much for icing. In the end, after a month-long insistence that he have “rainbow cake,” I borrowed a trick from a friend of mine and baked one. Six separate layers, each a different color. It was beautiful. And delicious. Alas, there was icing, but Ian ate some of it anyway, as long as I dug the cake out from between the icing layers.

Ogres have layers.

About the love of furry creatures … Since we had lost Pumpkin earlier in the year, Maya’s Hank kitty was feeling a little lonely. We figured Ian might enjoy a cat of his own and Hank might like to have a friend. At the end of November, we went to Austin Pets Alive and adopted a 12-week-old, solid black female kitten.

Ian was so happy. He snuggled her and petted her and … SHE LOVED IT. She followed him around. It was so cute! Ian means well, but he’s three. His affection can be a little rough, but nope, the cat puts up with it (you know, to a point).

Just a boy and his kitten

The best part about Ian and his kitten though happened when Sean explained to him that he needed to give his new pet a name. Ian thoughtfully considered it for a moment before telling Sean, “She likes N, O, and … X!” Nox. He named his solid black kitten Nox. This tweaked something in the back of Sean’s and my brains and we looked it up. Nox is Latin for “night.” According to Wikipedia, Nox is also the Roman goddess of night.

The cats actually got along with each other almost immediately. We tried keeping Nox in a separate room for a while so we could introduce them slowly. Hank stood at the door whining to be let in. Nox tried to climb the door, who knows to what end. We finally gave up and let Hank in to see her, and after some careful sniffing, they decided to be friends. It was the easiest cat introduction we’ve ever done, and we’ve had a few.

About the love of rainbows … Ian is a very sweet and kind boy. He adores his older sister. He loves to play with tiny things that he can collect into containers. He loves music and will sing, sing, sing when he thinks no one is listening. He builds things with Legos. He pretends he’s a doctor and gives us shots. He also takes care of baby dolls and cooks in the kids’ play kitchen. “There are no [boy/girl] toys; there are just toys,” is a common refrain in our house when someone brings home some nonsense from school or the park or a play date. For whatever reason, we’ve never thought to apply the same concept to their clothes.

So pink! So furry!

Ian will tell you his two favorite colors are pink and rainbow. His guys, a stuffed fox named Mulder and a soft monkey named Scully, drive rainbow cars and wear rainbow clothes and eat rainbow food. His favorite color to wear is pink. Bonus points if there are checkers or sparkles as well.

One day a long time ago now, I told Maya not to give Ian a skirt she had outgrown because most boys don’t wear them. She wanted to know why. And finally I stopped to think about it. There’s really no rational reason. (So far, Ian doesn’t care too much about skirts, but he LOVES tutus.)

At first, we thought Ian’s preferences were driven by a desire to emulate his sister, and I think because of this, we discouraged it at first. It didn’t take long though to realize that Ian prefers more pink in his wardrobe than Maya ever did. This past fall, even though we had bought Ian his own cool-weather stuff (and I swear, I tried to find bright colors and things he’d enjoy), he picked through Maya’s old clothes that we had been gathering up for donation and assembled his own winter wardrobe.

Wearing what he wants makes him so happy, and it’s such a simple and seemingly harmless way for him to express himself and to exert a little control over his life. I was worried that he’d catch crap for it, but so far people have been pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. Most parents we’ve chatted with acknowledge how boring boys’ clothes are – all dark, neutral hues, no sparkles, no sequins. At our house, it’s completely normal. Maya is thrilled when she can pass down something of hers to Ian that she knows he’ll love.

Not everyone in the world is on board, of course. Sean was once asked by a grocery store cashier if Ian had two daddies. Honestly that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard; no gay couple I know would dream of letting Ian leave the house in the pattern and color clashing get-ups he devises.

There’s no denying that it’s a man’s world in so many ways. We strive to make sure Maya knows she’s intelligent and capable and that she can be interested in whatever she chooses. But in this one thing, she has it easier. She prefers blue and green and she sports a very short haircut, and people to have realized that that’s perfectly fine, for the most part.

I am sure the hard times are coming for Ian though. One day, he’ll come home from school upset because he got picked on. He’ll tell us he wants “boy clothes” and doesn’t want to paint his nails any more. There’s a part of me that wants to keep him from getting made fun of, to ease his way in this world. (There’s a part of me that’s angry already about the narrow-minded torment he’s likely to encounter.) But more than any of that, I want him to be who he wants to be and to know that he has our support. What I really want of course is for the rest of the world to catch up and not give a little boy abuse for something as ridiculous as the color of clothes he prefers, but since that seems unlikely, support is what he will have.  And I will work very hard to temper my “fuck you” attitude when it comes to dealing with other people’s misguided assumptions about my kid. Probably.

Party time

At any rate, our pretty boy had a great birthday. Some of his friends came and petted animals with him. Illnesses and proximity to the holidays kept attendance light, but there were enough people for it to feel like a celebration. He had his rainbow cake and his “coca dot” decorations. He has a furry kitty to love and snuggle. And his smart friend Ruby picked out a fuzzy pink scarf like thing that Ian keeps hung on his bed, he likes it so much.

On Ian’s actual birthday, he chose California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. He’s a very particular eater, and one of the things we’ve discovered he will reliably eat is pepperoni pizza. He helped me bake some box-mix brownies for his birthday cake (after Maya’s cake, Sean’s cake, and Ian’s rainbow cake, I was pretty much all baked out at this point).

Birthday ice cream

Included in the photos below is Sean’s birthday cake as well. His birthday falls exactly halfway between Maya’s and Ian’s, and we make an effort to remember him too. This year, I gave Maya a shot at decorating Dad’s cake. I loaded up some orange icing into a piping bag and let her have at it. She’s a fiend for sprinkles, so she doused his cake in those as well. It was quite a creation, made with love and lots of sugar.

Back in November, Maya not so quietly turned 5. She was still deep in the throes of Moana love and asked me to bake her a “Te Fiti” cake. At the time, she also specified that it have chocolate icing and be lime flavored (since limes are green, like Te Fiti). Alas, the reality was a bit different, not that it mattered to her once she saw her cake.

Birthday balloons!

We also arranged for Maya to have her party with Emler Swim School, the same swimming pool company that she and Ian take their lessons with (albeit not at their “home” pool). The pool is indoors! And not very deep! And available!

We did worry a bit about the party though. Maya is a sweet, bright kid with a silly sense of humor, but we regularly are told that she doesn’t interact with her peers. For the longest time, when we asked her to tell us about her friends and their names and whatnot, we were met with either silence or a pouty, “I’m too tired to talk about that.”

I gamely sent out the evite to her class and hoped it would all work out. The days ticked by and we had so few responses. It was hard not to feel rejected on her behalf. In desperation, I sent out a “friendly reminder” maybe a week and a half or two before her birthday, and suddenly the floodgates opened. We went from “I hope Maya isn’t too disappointed” to “holy shit, should I bake a second cake?”

Moana, age 5

The cake provided its own set of challenges. I was tricked by YouTube. I wanted to make Maya a green cake that was wildly bedecked with a variety of colorful flowers. After a few YouTube videos showing me how to pipe buttercream flowers, I thought it seemed easy enough. All I’d need were a few supplies and some practice.

I bought the needed piping tips, made some icing, and took my first crack. It was a disaster. There were colorful blobs of … something. None of them really even hinted at looking like flowers. One really good trick I learned though was to pipe the flowers onto little pieces of parchment paper and then to freeze them. Once the flowers are frozen, you can peel the parchment off and stick the ones that don’t look terrible onto your cake.

I had made a delicious but very soft buttercream, so I thought maybe that softness was the trouble. I made a more sugar-dense icing. My resulting piped flowers were no better. I tried store-bought icing. Same. Chilling my icing a bit first. Same. Drinking heavily while piping. SAME!

Te Fiti cake

In desperation, I bought some Russian piping tips, which rely less on the skill of the ersatz cake decorator. The flowers I produced with those weren’t great, but at least they were recognizable as flowers. I tucked them into a bunch of star tip-applied green icing. It was definitely not what I had envisioned, but Maya seemed sufficiently wowed, so I’m going to call it a win.

Lolli and Pop arrived the Friday just before Maya’s birthday. She was so excited about having company. She got to build cars on the iPad with Lolli and tend to the plants and animals in Lolli’s Country Life Meadow game. She played endless hide-and-seek with Pop.

Maya on her “blue like the ocean” bicycle

A couple weeks before her birthday, we took Maya out to buy her big birthday present: a bicycle! She chose one that was “blue like the ocean” and proceeded to try to ride it around in the store. On birthday weekend, she went to the park with Sean, Ian, and Pop and practiced with her bike. We still have training wheels on it for now, but even so, her favorite thing is to go as fast as she can, and it’s a little nerve-wracking to watch. As with so many things, I expect she’ll want her training wheels off before I do.

Saturday night, to celebrate her “actual” birthday, we all met up with Anna, their former nanny and current “date night” babysitter, at Pappadeaux so Maya could have fried seafood. It worked out wonderfully! Maya got to pet a lobster, eat a mountain of fried shrimp, and receive a SLAB of birthday cake from the restaurant (which she didn’t pester our waiter about at all #sarcasm). Ian got to crawl around on the floor under our table, surfacing now and then for a bit of his chicken. The rest of us were able to enjoy a relatively peaceful and delicious seafood dinner.

Caution – 5-year-old swimming

On Sunday, the day of the big pool party, I was baking and decorating right up to the end. In a fizz, we loaded cake, cupcakes, snacks, drinks, and decorations, and I spent the drive over trying to figure out how to get everything set up in the allotted 15 minutes. I needn’t have worried. The folks at Emler had half our stuff set up before we even managed to carry everything in. Did we go overboard when we brought the bluetooth speaker along so the Moana soundtrack could play during the party? Maybe, but I regret nothing.

Maya had a great time! The pool was teeming with the pre-K crowd and some adventurous parents. Lolli and Pop took care of Maya and Ian in the pool while Sean and I made sure the party moved along smoothly. Maya made the rounds playing with other kids (!!!) and Ian surprised us all by willingly jumping into the pool again and again.

Maya’s school friends, Anna, and both sets of her grandparents were exceedingly generous, so she was awash in gifts throughout the weekend. Thanks go to Sean’s parents for keeping the kids entertained all weekend while we did party prep.

Presents!

Five year old Maya is tall and lanky. People are regularly surprised when we tell them her age, believing her to be older. She loves the Moana movie, particularly Te Fiti. She is currently fascinated with the different makes of cars and makes a game of finding different ones on her way to and from school (her favorite is Audi, because of the circles that make up its symbol). Other interests she has cycled through are bugs, space/planets/etc, and birds. She still loves to collect rocks and acorns. She is still playing piano and is just starting to use her left hand as well. She hates the smell of fire/smoke. Her birthday candles caused her some distress this year. Her independent streak has widened, since she’s five now. She now regularly talks about a few of the kids at school, actually mentioning them by name. I have asked her recently what kinds of things she likes, and she tells me that she does still like bugs, but she kind of likes cars more.

School pictures for preschoolers, for whatever reason, seemed ridiculous to me last year. And then we got the photos and they were pretty good. So much so that I was eagerly anticipating them this year. Time for photos came and went. I asked about them at the office and was assured they would happen. More time passed, and I had basically given up. Then one shiny Monday in early November, I happened to see a flyer announcing that they would be having school photos the following day.

Maya – age almost 5, Ian – age almost 3

I was so annoyed. Sean had been gone for the better part of a week, and I was frazzled. And here was yet another decision that had to be made quickly. I was in full on “get shit done” mode. I got clothes washed. I laid out outfits. I thought through all the questions I needed to verify with the school. I never actually *asked* the kids or Sean what they thought about it all.

Needless to say, everyone’s clothes changed to suit their own preferences. In a mad scramble and with an unclear understanding of how sibling photos were getting done, we sent them off to school. When I went to pick them up that afternoon, I got to look at the photos, and to my astonishment, they were great! Maya actually smiled instead of making any of her usual repertoire of goofy faces. The kids posed well together. Ian’s photos actually got done at the same time. It worked out perfectly.

Maya’s love of the Moana movie was still going strong in October (and still is today). Moana shows strength of character, nimble thinking, and an ability to solve her own problems. But Moana is not who Maya loves best. Maya loves Te Fiti. She could watch the last few minutes of the movie again and again. Seeing Te Fiti’s heart restored and watching the goddess burst into greenery and flowers is her favorite part of that movie. Te Fiti is who Maya decided she wanted to be for Halloween. You know what they don’t sell on Amazon? A Te Fiti costume.

Te Fiti!

I have punked out on making the kids’ costumes year after year because with everything else going on, it was just easier to outsource that shit. But this year, Maya’s heart was set on being the big green Te Fiti goddess. Luckily Ian, when quizzed repeatedly about his preferences, told me pretty much every single time that what he really wanted to be was a jack-o-lantern. That I could get off the shelf.

Jack-o-lantern!

I spent several weeks buying little bits and pieces of Maya’s costume here and there. A wig and face paint from Amazon. A green t-shirt and pants from primary.com. I poked around on Etsy looking for a flower crown, but in the end, I just bought supplies and made one. And then because I’m not an idiot, I made a second crown for Ian to be his pumpkin vines.

Maya’s is the white one. Ian’s is the “rainbow” one.

While all these supplies were collected, preparations were made for Halloween. The kids painted little pumpkins at school. We bought a few decorations from one of those pop-up Halloween stores as a reward for good behavior. Our home jack-o-lanterns were done in our traditional way where each kid chooses what they want on their pumpkin, Anna draws the design, I gut and carve, and Sean heroically lights the candle. Maya, oddly, chose the littler pumpkin and wanted just a straight up jack o lantern face like she had seen on the cover of one of her books. Ian wanted Dingle Tiger. Don’t know who Dingle Tiger is? To the rest of us, he’s Daniel Tiger, and he’s something of an offshoot of the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood show we all probably watched when we were kids.

Dingle tiger and the old skool jack-o-lantern

We first got to debut the Te Fiti and jack-o-lantern costumes for the carnival at the kids’ school the Friday before Halloween. It was a cold evening for Texas, so we wound up putting a sweater over Te Fiti’s costume – it was pure luck that we had one that was kind of green. Ian, who loves to be pretty, had recently discovered Maya’s old orange tutu (seen here), and he insisted on wearing that to the carnival. I actually thought it worked really well, but in typical Ian fashion, he refused to wear it again.

Ready for the school carnival!

The kids walked around with a green tinge to their faces for a few days, and it was just wearing off when the big day arrived: trick or treat time! We got all dolled up and let Sean take some nice semi-controlled photos against a backdrop before heading out. Maya enacted several of Te Fiti’s best moments from the movie: gazing lovingly at a little Moana doll, throwing shade at a little Maui doll (he stole her heart, you know), folding herself up and turning into an island. Ian just pranced around hammed it up for the camera.

You mean, we just go to the door, and they give us candy? We’re in!

Maya and Ian had soooo much fun trick or treating. They took turns being the one who rang the doorbell. They said their trick-or-treats and thank yous with smiles and clear voices. Maya even left with a closing “see you next Halloween!” just to reinforce the fact that we are antisocial people who don’t see our neighbors but once a year. We closed out our evening with a visit to Anna’s to trick or treat there and let her see the kids’ costumes.

At the end of the day, the kids were left tired, sugared up, and with a faint green hue about their faces, but I think they’ll both tell you that they had a really good time and are already looking forward to next Halloween.

This past July, we arranged a family trip to Missouri and Alabama. Usually, we try and line up with a holiday to maximize our vacation. This time though, we aligned our trip with Sean’s high school reunion. I guess I need to go to extra Sean reunions since I’ve never gone to mine (if we even have one – I’m not sure I’ve ever been invited to one).

Are we there yet?

To save some money, we decided to drive this year. And since we had avoided so much expense on plane tickets and rental cars, we reasoned that the purchase of a second iPad so both kids could be entertained during something like 35 hours of car travel was well within budget. (Spoiler – the iPads were worth their weight on goooooold.)

I don’t recall anything eventful about our drive to Missouri. We arrived late with kids that were wired for sound and ready to play after their lengthy travel confinement. Grammy and Grandpa’s house has a whole room full of toys and a basement full of toys to boot, so the kids were able to run amok for a little while.

Collecting “sea shells”

The next day the kids’ cousins, aunts, and uncles all came over. We traveled by tractor-drawn wagon to a nearby creek to play for a while. The kids loved it! Maya in particular was all in once she discovered there were shells to collect. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen shells this large in a Missouri creek before, or even along the Mississippi. Maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough.

Maya and Grandpa practicing their surprised faces

My parents had an adventure planned for us the next day. We all drove out toward Carbondale to see the Dungeons and Dragons Park. Maya and Ian weren’t super excited for another long car ride, but they loved the park. The grounds were well kept and there were sculptures all over the place. There was a giant dragon to climb on and a really great maze-like castle to get lost in. The kids ran and rand and ran. The adults sweated and sweated and sweated.

Sitting with Grammy

After that, we all drove over to Giant City State Park, and after a quick lunch, enjoyed a genuine hike in the wilderness. As I recall, Ian was wearing out by this point and needed a lot of carrying and piggy-backing. At the end of our hike, the kids played on a little playground for a while and the grown ups had a little rest before the long drive home.

Maya and Ian with Great Grandma. And no, they weren’t at their most cooperative.

Our last day in Missouri was for relaxing and visiting. We stopped in and saw Great Grandma Schmidt for a while in the morning. We saw a friend of mine from grade school and her daughter for a while in the afternoon. But mostly, we lolled around the house and the kids played.

The next day, we drove to Alabama. Before we left though, we had to deal with pants. Ian made it clear that he was particularly fond of a very cute pair of pajama pants he had found in the toy room closet a day or two before. They were purple with pink bows on them and the material was very soft. He called them his fancy pants. He had worn them most of the day before, to sleep that night, and did NOT want to return them the next day. Luckily, Grammy let him keep them. I can probably count on one hand the number of times he HASN’T slept in those pants since we left Missouri, and it’s been months now. He loves, loves, loves them.

Sliding with Pop (note the fanciness of Ian’s pants)

After what felt like a very short drive (7-8 hours instead of 13-14 for the trip from TX to MO), we arrived in Alabama with two kids ready to rock and roll. Lolli and Pop were prepared for that though and had already made plans to take us to Homewood Park and let Maya and Ian run out some energy. After a good run through the park, we went over to Magic City Sweet Ice for gelato.

Maya swinging with Lolli

A while back, Pop had mentioned to Maya that we might be able to take a canoe out on the lake during our visit. Little did he know that Maya, with her Moana fetish would latch onto that and keep it in mind no matter how hot it got. When we talked about our trip to see Lolli and Pop, Maya would immediately grin and remind us that they were taking her out in a canoe. Of course, they delivered. And that is how we found ourselves on a blistering hot day out at Oak Mountain State Park sitting like sweaty ducks out on the lake.

They are READY

Maya had a fine old time padding her canoe with Sean and Pop’s help. Lolli and Ian and I stuck with a more stable paddle boat. Ian kept hanging onto Lolli and I to keep us from falling out – ha! I think he enjoyed it, but it really was very hot, and bless him, he’s just a little more hesitant about things than his sister.

Making music with Lolli

The next day, we took Maya and Ian to the McWane Center. This was not their first time, but they do love it there. It’s a children’s museum / science center, and I’m not sure we’ve seen half of it. This time, one of the big draws was a giant piano they got to play on. Maya spent quite a while with Pop working on an animation project.

Maya and Pop

Sean and I can no longer remember which evening it happened, but we also went to the wonderful Homewood Pool and played for a while. Maya and Ian both love the pool and Lolli and Pop seem to love taking them. The kids hung out with their grandparents a lot at the pool, so Sean and I often found ourselves wandering around just to check in on them now and then. At one point, I walked over to the kid pool / splash pad area to see Maya midway through her run around-climb-slide circuit. I asked her how she was doing, and in a breathless voice she said, “Level 5 is hard!” and continued on her way. Perplexed, I watched for a while. Sure enough, Maya had devised a variety of ways to go down the slide, and each time she achieved one, she’d have to level up and do sometime different. I don’t remember any more what level 5 entailed, but apparently, it was tricky.

On our last full day in Alabama, we again mostly relaxed and got things ready for the looooong drive home. Sean and I went out to his reunion and Maya and Ian hung out with Lolli and Pop.

The drive home was again very long. I have to say though, having an iPad for each kid and a handful of activities made our drive more tolerable. The kids actually dealt with it really well. One thing we did learn is that they’re still really too little to eat in the car. Stopping to eat adds SOOOO much time to our trip, but it’s still imperative for now. All in all, the driving was ok, though we really (REALLY) don’t feel like repeating it any time soon. That said, I feel like this has opened the door for some longer road trips, so maybe we can work some of that in over the next year.

By now I should know that making vacation plans is a bit of a fool’s errand for us, but I do it anyway. We decided to take a weeklong Seattle vacation in late May and early June to coincide with this gaming competition Sean wanted to go to. I worked on setting up a trip that was fun for both grown ups and kids, lumping our activities geographically, and I was even starting to think through meals that might go with each of those locations. And then the next viral invasion hit our house.

Dis mah butt, Seattle!

Maybe a week before we were to leave, Maya got some kind of nasty congestion and coughing illness. She had started complaining about her ears, so we took her to the doctor. He sent us off with a prescription for antibiotics, and we thought we might have her feeling better before vacation. Then Sean got sick too, and he felt even more miserable than she seemed to.

The day we were to fly out to Seattle, Ian started sniffling and coughing. While he had more or less decided air travel was ok, he changed his mind when he spent most of the flight coughing and runny-nosed.

We arrived at a reasonable hour at our AirBNB house in Bothell. It was big enough that each kid had their own room, which was good since they spent our whole trip in various stages of illness. Ian’s favorite part of the house though was that the light switches were down where he could reach them. He went bonkers flipping lights on and off and on again. It finally drove me crazy enough that I asked him to stop. Apparently he slinkered back to the bedroom where Sean, unbeknownst to Ian, was resting. Sean tells me he muttered something like, “I’m gonna turn the light on. I’m not caring, Mommy’s caring.” Little turd.

Sick Dad went out and got us Burgermaster for our dinner. Sick everyone but me went to bed, and after a remarkably long day, I hauled my un-sick self over to the grocery store to stock up the fridge with breakfasts, snacks, and drinks.

Obligatory doughnut face shot.

The next day, even though 75% of us were sick, we managed to get up really early thanks to the time zone difference. We took our time getting out of the house, deciding that with two sick kids, we’d try to keep our outings small, but still try to make a vacation of it. Even though we had had breakfast, by 10 we were ravenous, so we had a “snack” at a local doughnut shop called Top Pot Doughnuts. I’d call it solid, but not out of this world. My favorite was the lemon iced old-fashioned doughnut. Maya seemed to like her chocolate doughnut with sprinkles. Ian, still not a fan of doughnuts, will actually only eat sprinkles.

Shortly before our vacation, Maya had watched the Moana movie and fell head over heels in love with it. It ousted long-running favorite Finding Dory, she loved it so much. Sean blew Maya’s mind when he bought the soundtrack for the movie so she could listen to the music whenever she wanted, even if she wasn’t able to watch it. Needless to say, Moana provided the soundtrack for our entire trip. By the end, even I could sing along with parts of it, and at that time, I hadn’t even managed to watch the whole movie.

It’s not hot here!

We spent a couple hours wandering around Volunteer Park gawking at ferns and towering evergreens and so many flowers in full bloom. We decided to climb up the stairs in the water tower, Ian even insisting on doing it himself. He made it probably 2/3 of the way up before I asked him if I could carry him since he was sick. No, he insisted he’d make it on his own. Maybe six or eight steps later, he said, “Mom, can you carry me? I’m sick.” Sure, buddy.

The view from the water tower was nice. The day was even clear enough that we got a nice look at Mt Rainier. We capped off our visit with some time on the playground, where Maya nearly made herself vomit on some kind of spinning ride.

We stopped at a gyro joint for a late lunch. I remember the food being good, but more than that, what sticks with me is how kind the people were with our restless and somewhat irritable children.

We met up with friends of ours from college that evening for dinner. Missy and Larry and their son Anthony braved illness and small children to hang out with us several times on our trip, and it was so much fun to catch up with them.

Again, with most of the family sick, we adopted an easy pace for our day. We got a late start and began our outing with lunch at Ivar’s. When Sean and I started thinking about this Seattle trip, that was his only real request. It’s fast food seafood, and it is delicious. Maya is oddly crazy about clams; however, while she plowed through some fried shrimp, she couldn’t have cared less about the fried clams we offered her.

All in the name of chocolate.

Our one scheduled outing for this day took place at Theo Chocolate. We could have done a straight up factory tour, but that wasn’t really an option with two small children. For kids in our age group, Theo offers a “chocolate story time.” They did their story time, complete with chocolate samples, and then we got a very succinct tour of the factor. All this was capped off with a wander through their store where there were mountains of samples to try. Sean and I enjoyed the whole thing. The kids enjoyed the chocolate and tolerated the tour. They kind of got a kick out of the hairnets, though.

Freemont troll

We squeezed in a quick visit to the Freemont Troll before heading home to crash. Maya seemed to have fun clambering over troll fingers and arms. Ian mostly just wanted to be held.

The next day, I was finally starting to get sick as well. I never managed to feel as bad as the rest of the family, but I certainly didn’t feel good.

We had decided to try something different with the kids during this trip. In poking around for interesting activities, I discovered that the Seattle Symphony at Benaroya Hall offered a children’s symphony. It was great! Before the concert, the kids got to wander around and play with different musical instruments. The show itself, billed as a Playdate with Brahms, was of manageable length and highly interactive. Maya seemed to really enjoy herself. Ian mostly just felt terrible.

We were planning to go ride the ferris wheel along the waterfront after that, but Ian wasn’t doing too well. Instead we decided to eat lunch and head back to the house. Lunch was at Ivar’s Acres of Clams restaurant, situated right along the water. We initially tried to eat outside since the weather was so incredible. It was sunny but not hot; we had forgotten that could happen. Maya was all for it, of course, but sad Ian just curled in on himself and tried to hide. To her credit, Maya didn’t pitch a fit about moving inside though. Instead she steadily inhaled an entire appetizer order of steamed clams in a light, coconut broth. Then she ate some of Ian’s chicken fingers to boot.

We gave up on this day, went back to the house, and let Ian have a good long nap. Once he got up, we took him to the nicest urgent care clinic I’ve ever been too. I’m not kidding. It was actually a borderline pleasant experience. The person who checked us in was also our nurse. The doctor was actually nice to Ian. They called us to follow up after the fact. Unfortunately, poor Ian had an infection in both ears. It’s no wonder he was having such a miserable day.

The next day was Sean’s gaming tournament, so the kids and I drove him down into the city and dropped him off. Ian, as if on a mission, slept the whole way there and the whole way back. By mid-morning though, both kids were in the back yard swinging on swings and collecting rocks and pine cones in colorful buckets.

On top of the lighthouse – Maya and Larry

We went up to meet Missy, Larry, and Anthony for lunch at a burger joint called Nick’s Jr. The burgers were solid; mine had gyro meat on it. Afterward, to allow Maya a bit of fun since she was feeling so much better than her brother, we went to Mukilteo Lighthouse Park. Maya bonded with Missy over sea creatures, rocks, and the beach. Ian clung to me like a tired little monkey. Both the kids climbed the little lighthouse, Ian flatly insisting on doing it himself.

We drove home after that to let Ian have a nap. You know how some kids, after a nap, wake up feeling refreshed and relaxed, a sleepy smile on their puffy faces? That was not Ian on this day. He woke up pissed off, and he let me hear about it the entire time we were getting ready, the entire time we were loading up, and the whole way into downtown. Luckily, he was so happy to see Sean that his mood did a near-perfect 180.

After a quick dinner, Missy, Larry, and Anthony came over to our Bothell house for a while to hang out. I was tired, but it was pleasant to just talk to other grown ups for a while after kid wrangling all day.

The next morning, Sean and Maya went out to fetch us Top Pot again. We tried to squeeze in a quick lunch before heading into the city at an Indian buffet. Normally the kids are into that sort of thing, but not today.

In the ferris wheel!

Our day picked up when we boarded the Seattle Great Wheel at Pier 57. The kids were of course fidgety while waiting in line, but once they were loaded into our capsule, they seemed to sincerely enjoy themselves, especially once they saw the seagulls and their poop atop the buildings we were towering over.

Switch, the giant pacific octopus

Seattle Aquarium was our next stop. It is meant to largely represent local habitats, and it was beautiful. The kids were able to touch sea urchins and anemones. You could even feel the anemones react to you and kind of brush their tentacles against your fingers, trying to figure out what they had gotten ahold of. We saw all manner of gorgeously presented sea life. Best of all, we saw two Giant Pacific octopuses named Switch and Tako. These two meandered around a two-column tank with a tunnel connecting the tunnels crossways. Switch, the female, was very active, her tentacles oozing around corners, suckers dominating the tank walls. She would occasionally propel herself across the tank, skin smoothed and tentacles extending behind her, landing in a bunched up heap amongst the rocks below or suctioning herself to the side of the tank. The male, Tako, mostly stayed huddled up in his particular corner of the tank, though we did get to see him unfurl and change color at feeding time.

That evening, we wandered up to Everett to see Missy, Larry, and Anthony again, and they fed us dinner! Maya and Missy toured their garden. Maya drove Anthony nuts with her endless talking while he was watching TV. Ian, much to his delight, got to clean off the countertop. All in all, it was a nice evening.

On our last full day in Seattle, we said eff it and went into full tourist mode. We pretty much just parked the car and spent the day at the Seattle Center. We started by taking the kids to the Pacific Science Center to let them run off some steam. They had a lot of fun making music and building large-scale carbon nanotubes, and trying to make giant bubbles.

Budding photographer

After a quick lunch and some dessert fudge at the Armory, we headed to the International Fountain. Maya and Ian LOVED IT. The weather was warm, but not blistering. They could run around and play in the water a bit. Maya (and most of the kids there) had a game where they’d run up and smack the fountain when it wasn’t squirting water and try to get away before it started back up again. Again and again, Maya did this. Bolstered by her success and because he wants to do anything his big sister does (she has the *best* ideas), Ian gave it a go. He crept up and touched the fountain. You all know where this is going – about the time he was ready to turn and run away, the water started back up, and he got soaked through and through. Now Maya would have laughed it off and used that as an excuse to give up on avoiding being splattered. Ian, however, was upset. Luckily, we had brought spare clothes (I figured they’d get wet on purpose), so we could make him comfortable again.

Did not make it out in time

Before our trip to Seattle, we had tried to prepare the kids a little bit for the different things we might get to see. It’s fun to see them get interested in what they might get to do. The thing that Maya really seemed to fixate on was the Space Needle. Every time she saw it as we were wandering around town, she pointed it out. You can imagine her excitement once we were actually able to go up in it. And then we got way, way up to the top. And about 30 seconds later, she was ready to go back down. We walked around and showed the kids Mount Rainier. We watched sea planes flying through the air. We saw giant buildings at eye level. Maybe they’re still a little too young to appreciate it. We did spend a long time in the gift shop in at the bottom, trying to let the kids select a souvenir. Ian left with a straw cup which, to this day, he refers to as his “skedaddle cup.”

On the way back to the car, we played for a while outside the Pacific Science Center again, mostly shooting things with water. The kids had a car nap on the way up north, and we met Missy, Larry, and Anthony for one last dinner.

Our travel back the next day was largely uneventful once we finally made onto our airplane. Thanks to unfavorable traffic and a small GPS whoopsie on my part, we were cutting it pretty close on getting the whole rental car, bag check, security line shuffle completed before our plane took off. But alas, we made home, back to the sweltering Texas heat.

Group selfie!

This vacation was hard but also great. Traveling with little kids is always a bit tough, but it was the illnesses that really made it grueling for us. Seattle was beautiful. We weren’t sure what to expect since it was early summer, but we had almost no rain while we were there, and compared to blistering Texas, the Seattle version of “hot” was just fine with us. We probably didn’t get to do half of what we wanted to do, and we certainly didn’t get to do any kind of deep dive on the local food scene. But, we meandered around at kid pace, and because we weren’t busy being tourists, we were able to spend lots of time visiting our friends. I think I’m going to call it a win.

Easter 2017 was a little rough for us. Maya had had a virus earlier in the year that had wreaked havoc on her intestinal tract (her doctor called it a “gastric insult”), and in an effort to help her damaged gut recover, we were avoiding sugar and dairy. The Easter bunny wasn’t allowed to bring any candy to our house.

We don’t wind up taking too many family photos.

Luckily, there were all sorts of things that stood in. Sean assembled Easter baskets full of non-edible goodies. Sean and the kids dyed eggs and left them out for the Easter bunny to hide. These were augmented with sea creature shaped plastic eggs filled with temporary tattoos from Lolli and Pop.

Cracking the cascarones on Daddy’s head!

And we also had cascarones. Sean picked a dozen pre-made ones up from HEB, our local grocery store. They are painted up all pretty like our hard-boiled ones, but the eggs themselves have been drained out, the shells dried, and then the remaining shells loaded with confetti. The kids LOVED them. They had a lot of fun whacking them over our heads, throwing the confetti around, making a mess of mom and dad. If memory serves (and honestly, who knows if it really does), this was Maya and Ian’s favorite part of the front yard egg hunt.

Maya could barely hang on to her kite!

We had one really great weekend where we took the kids kite flying at Zilker Park. Weather wise, and kite flying wise, things couldn’t have been more perfect. Maya in particular had a lot of fun flying her swank new Finding Dory kite. We ran into trouble on the potty front. Ian let me know that he needed to go, so I hauled him over to the porta-potties. He took one look at what he’d have to sit on (and more importantly, what lurked beneath) and promptly let me know that he didn’t have to go after all. So instead, I hoofed him all the way back to our parked car, where we were still smart enough to have the little potty seat. One time would have been fine, but he was still finding his footing on the toilet training front at the time, so I don’t know how many trips I made to take him to the bathroom in the back of the Prius. I missed most of the kite flying.

Mother’s Day!

I don’t recall us marking mother’s day or father’s day with much fanfare, but I do remember haranguing Sean into taking a photo with me and the kids. For both events, the kids had little breakfasts for us at their school where we were presented with little gifts from them. For mother’s day, they both brought home sprouted seeds, which we of course added to our backyard garden.

Guys, I’m on stage!!!

Maya had decided to try out dance class at her school starting in January. The focus of the company is on ballet and tap, and they come to the kids’ school to provide the lessons. In May they had a recital. If you had told me when I first got pregnant that my daughter would one day be wearing a pink leotard and tutu, I wouldn’t have believed you. But, over the course of parenthood, I’ve developed the habit of trying my best to let them be whoever they want to be. If that means a pink tutu, so be it.

While Maya seemed to enjoy her class and recital, she decided to try gymnastics instead this fall. About a month in, she said she wanted to go back to dance, so who knows. Four year olds are fickle.

Back in mid-March at the tail-end of spring break, we took Maya and Ian out for their annual bluebonnet photos. It just so happened that Grammy and Grandpa Schmidt were visiting at the same time. It’s a beautiful time of year to come to central Texas. The weather is warming up but not yet hot, all manner of wildflowers color highway medians and hillsides, and it’s still pretty cold in the Midwest, so it was a pleasant escape for my parents.

Maya, age 4 and Ian, age 2

The kids loved monopolizing their grandparents’ time. We didn’t get a long visit, but there was plenty of time spent combing the yard and filling Grandpa’s pockets with all manner of acorns, snail shells, and rocks. Ian had just spent his spring break week potty training, so he was obsessed with the bathroom, pestering all of us into taking him potty about 10 times for every one time he really needed to go.

Does this count as Maya’s first camping trip?

The fun thing Maya got to do over spring break was test out camping. Mind you, we just pitched the tent in the front yard, but she and I slept out there all night. She LOVED it and still talks about going camping again. We need to run the same test with Ian to see how he feels about it.

Gardening! (Ian doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, so it was really just me and Maya doing the planting.)

We also built our spring garden. This year is the longest it’s lasted. The kids and I start out with big ambitions about all the great produce we could grow, and as the heat sets in and our schedules get hectic and illnesses and/or job issues kick in, the garden gets neglected. This year it made it all the way to mid-summer. We actually had real lima bean pods on the plant. Maybe next year is our year.

Ian and Maya with Grammy and Grandpa

The evening before they drove back to Missouri, we took Grammy, Grandpa, and the kids out to Pizzeria Sorellina. It’s a beautiful place with some really interesting and well-made pizzas. We sat outside at a picnic table, sipped cocktails, and watched the sky darken. The kids ran around and ignored the grown-ups until dessert showed up. Ian visited the bathroom way too frequently.

I don’t remember a lot of the details of the visit anymore, but I do remember that we all enjoyed it. Maya and Ian love seeing their grandparents. Ian got to show off his new bathroom skills. My parents got to escape the cold for a couple of days. Sean and I could actually do a few things around the house without the kids immediately underfoot. Since we weren’t really able to go anywhere for spring break this year, it was nice to have family come to see us. (I’m not sure who we’re kidding. They totally came for the grandkids!)