Disney World, Part I: The Drive

We spent five nights and six days in Disney World. Scott and I had a great working vacation. I say "working vacation" because I don't think it's possible to have a relaxing vacation with a toddler and an infant. But, we had a wonderful time. In fact, we had so much fun that we'll be going back in June for another four nights. Thanks to a Disney gift card that we got as a part of our last package, our forever tickets and a great deal for booking before we left, we will be going on another vacation almost for free. Yay! I'm even more excited to go back in June because the weather will be much more accomodating then. I think that was the only unfortunate thing about this trip -- the weather. It was too cold to enjoy the hotel's pool or the water parks. In fact, it was so cold that staying at the parks all day was difficult. We made the most of it, but I'm looking forward to enjoying all the water fun in June. Eli had such a good time that he keeps asking when we are going back. I think we have one hundred and four days until we return. I told him it was probably too long to count, but he's insisting.

As you can imagine, the drive was challenging at best. But, we survived in large part because Dendi and Bapa let us borrow their van. That made a huge difference, as we could all spread out, but I could still reach both kids. Another thing that made the car ride go smoother was that Eli did an amazing job. He entertained himself for 80-90% of each drive. He spent lots of time looking at his Disney World maps, coloring his color by numbers, doing mazes, listening to his radio and his new Mickey Mouse music player. Often, I would get him started on an activity and he would continue it by himself. Unfortunately, he had to. Keira was not a happy camper.

She spent most of both drives alternating between mild fussing and all out screaming. Not fun. My best weapon was all her books. She would stop fussing to listen to her books and then try to play with the flaps for a while. I also kept giving her new things to play with which would hold her attention and stop her fussing momentarily. But, keeping her relatively happy was a full-time job. She is used to nursing whenever she's sleepy, fussy or generally needs to be consoled. She couldn't figure out why I was sitting so close, but refusing to give her num nums. It broke my heart. I finally figured out on the ride back home, when we were about an hour from home, that it was possible for me to nurse her in the car while I sat right next to her with my seat belt on. It was terribly precarious, but it worked like a charm. She happily fell asleep in about two minutes. I plan to do that as needed on our next trip down. It should make the whole trip a lot more enjoyable.

Another thing that Eli did to amuse himself while I took care of his grumpy sister was look for water towers. Most of the drive is flat -- perfect for finding lots of water towers. Diane had photographed water towers on their drive to Florida for their cruise and she included the pictures in Eli's water tower book. Thoughtfully, Scottie packed the book, and as we saw water towers along the road Eli tried to find them in his book. We also tried to take some of our own water tower pictures. It was very difficult, as Scott was trying to drive and I was trying to entertain the babes. Here is the best picture that we got.


An interesting thing about our drive down to Disney World was that we left at 3 a.m. Our original plan was to leave at 5 a.m., but then we shaved two hours off of that time to try to avoid the impending snow storm. Once Eli woke up as I was carrying him to the car, he couldn't fall back to sleep. He was too excited. Which made it extra amazing that he self entertained. It was the middle of the night! But, of course as we neared Disney World, the exhaustion finally took over and he fell asleep. Even though he was so excited to arrive, he was actually asleep when we drove under this sign. Scottie took a picture of it so we could show him later. I also took a picture of Eli and Keira as we entered Disney World. Eli was sound asleep and I could still make Keira smile even though she had endured 8+ hours of car fun. As you can see from the picture of Keira, she's still teething away. Her fifth tooth (bottom left) came in that morning.




He finally woke up as we were driving into our hotel, All Star Movies, parking lot. Then I snapped a few more pictures as he looked around grinning and shaking his Mickey Mouse tambourine in appreciation.