Merry Christmas!

At school this year, Jackson's class made a big list of what everyone wanted for Christmas. Jackson's wish was for a Fire Truck. Even though we had already done our shopping, we rushed out to Target and bought the biggest, shiniest fire truck we could find to put on the fireplace on Christmas morning.

A few days later, Santa came to visit his school. While we were walking over to see him, I said, "Jackson, are you going to ask Santa for a fire truck?" "No!" he answered, "I want a kite." "Ummm..what, baby? I thought you wanted a fire truck." "No, I want a kite," he said. When Santa asked what he wanted, he firmly said, "I want a kite!"

My dad and I drove down to the beach with me a few days before Christmas, and we managed to locate a kite (they're hard to find this time of year!). But on Christmas morning, Jackson just seemed confused. He kept asking, "Where my kite?" I can only imagine that he had envisioned the kite floating around the room on Christmas morning.
That didn't stop him from thoroughly enjoying his gifts. He couldn't open them fast enough, and had trouble waiting for everyone else to open theirs (and believe me, the vast majority were for him anyway!).

We wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!

The Best Day to Visit the Zoo

After spending a long weekend in Disney, we were sick of huge crowds and lines. So we were pleasantly surprised to find that the best possible day to visit the zoo is actually Christmas Eve! We just about had the whole place to ourselves.

Jackson got to pick any animal on the carousel (and could take as long as he
wanted to pick).

This experience was a little freakier then it looks...these birds are loud and
aggressive!

No need to strain through crowds to see the animals! Most of the time it was
just us.

We actually got to feed a giraffe with our hands! Amazing!

Me and my baby...I think this is where Santa was supposed to sit....

Christmas in Disney World!

On the spur of the moment, Matt and I decided to book a long weekend in Disney World a couple of weeks before Chrismas. Despite a little bit of rainy and cold weather, December is a wonderful time to visit Disney. They have so many beautiful holiday themed displays and shows, and the crowds are reportedly smaller than usual in the weeks before Christmas (I've heard that the weeks around Christmas and New Years are actually among the busiest). I say reportedly because I really can't imagine them being any larger. Even on a supposedly quiet week, Disney is pretty darn busy. One of the bonus parts to our trip is that most things in Disney World are free for kids under 3, so it was a great time to go because Jackson was old enough to really get into the magic of it all, but young enough to be FREE. We had an amazing time and are talking about making annual visits.

EPCOT HAS A BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS DISPLAY THAT IS SET TO MUSIC

MORE EPCOT LIGHTS TO ENJOY WHILE WAITING (ENDLESSLY) FOR DINNER RESERVATIONS

THIS GINGERBREAD HOUSE IN EPCOT IS MADE OUT OF 100% EDIBLE MATERIALS. IT SMELLED AMAZING!

THE CASTLE AT NIGHT IS SO MUCH BETTER THEN I REMEMBER FROM MY OWN CHILDHOOD. THIS MIGHT NOT BE A SPECIAL HOLIDAY DISPLAY, BUT THEY MADE THE CASTLE LOOK LIKE IT WAS MADE OUT OF ICE.

Honey We Shrunk the Kid Playground

Jackson loved Disney World, but we noticed that he spent a lot of time sitting - in his stroller as we raced across the parks (and this is a child who has not ridden in a stroller for months), in rides, on boats, on buses...it's a lot of walking for mom and dad, but a lot of sitting for toddlers. So I think Jackson was thrilled beyond belief by the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground at Hollywood Studios. It's designed like a gigantic garden and you are the size of an ant inside of it. They have tons of cool caves, slides, webs, and other neat things to discover. Jackson especially liked these grass stubs (I guess that's what they are...) that made chiming noises when you jump on them. I'm not kidding when I say that at least half of the kids there left crying because they wanted to stay longer. Here are a few highlights:

Disney World Rides

One of the the things that really surprised me about our Disney World trip was just how many rides they have for little kids. Jackson isn't the largest two year old, and pretty much the only things he couldn't ride were the really big roller coasters. Heck, they even have a roller coaster in Disney's Toon Town that is designed just for kids, and Jackson loved it so much we actually did it twice (and while it's no Six Flags ride, it's pretty thrilling even for adults). Matt's favorite ride was Pirates of the Caribbean (he's so old school). My favorite was the new 3D Toy Story ride at Hollywood Studios - so cool. One of the other surprises was that the line for most rides was 20 minutes or less (we used Fastpass a lot on the popular rides, which definitely helped). Here are few that we managed to get pictures of:

MY CRAZY HUSBAND ACTUALLY LET JACKSON

DRIVE THE CAR ON THIS RACE CAR RIDE

THIS

ROCKET RIDE WENT REALLY FAST -

IT WAS EVEN EXCITING FOR

THE ADULTS

THE AFRICAN SAFARI RIDE AT ANIMAL KINGDOM IS REALLY COOL, BUT GOES BY WAY TOO
QUICK CONSIDERING HOW MANY COOL ANIMALS THERE ARE

Character Mania!

One of the reasons that we haven't hadn't Disney World before now is that Jackson was absolutely terrified in characters in costumes. I envisioned walking around the Magic Kingdom dripping sweat while dragging a terrified and exhausted child behind me. But we recently ran into our local baseball mascot at our Children's Museum, and he wasn't afraid at all, so I knew it was safe to make the trip. One of the things that I didn't realize was that the characters aren't just wandering around the park waiting to scare small children anyway. For the most part you have to wait in lines to meet them, so really they could be mostly avoided if you have a phobic child. Plus, I think they must hire tiny teenage girls to play the characters because most of them are really quite small, despite the big masks. Anyway, Jackson decided that he loved meeting the characters, so we toted him around from park to park so that he could hug them. He kept asking, "He going to talk? Why he not talk?" but otherwise was pretty awed by the whole thing.

THIS WAS THE FIRST CHARACTER THAT JACKSON MET, AND HE JUST ABOUT BURST OUT HIS LITTLE FLEECE PULLOVER IN EXCITEMENT. LOOK AT THAT GRIN!

JACKSON WAS CONVINCED THIS WAS AN OCTOPUS...NO CLUE WHY...

THE TOY STORY MEET AND GREET WAS PROBABLY ONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE TRIP FOR ME. THE CHARACTERS WERE SO SWEET, AND CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME PICTURE ON ANDY'S BED:

WE ALSO DID A CHARACTER BREAKFAST WITH THE LITTLE EINSTEINS AND JO JO. JACKSON WAS VISIBLY DISAPPOINTED THAT HIS FAVORITE CHARACTER ANNIE DIDN'T MAKE AN APPEARANCE, BUT WAS SO HAPPY TO MEET

LEO, JUNE, JOJO, AND GOLIATH.



THIS PICTURE DIDN'T COME OUT THAT GREAT, BUT I WILL LOVE WINNIE THE POOH CHARACTERS FOREVER BECAUSE AFTER WE MET POOH, EEYORE, AND TIGGER, THE HOSTESS TOLD US THAT JACKSON WAS THE BEST BEHAVED CHILD THAT THEY HAD HAD ALL DAY. I DON'T CARE HOW MUCH THEY PAY HER TO SAY THAT: IT MADE MY WHOLE WEEK. LUCKILY SHE DIDN'T SEE HIM TWO DAYS LATER WHEN HE HAD A FALL DOWN DRAG OUT TANTRUM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAGIC KINGDOM BECAUSE MATT PUT KETCHUP ON HIS HOT DOG (OR SOME OTHER EQUALLY INANE REASON - WE WERE NEVER QUITE CLEAR ON IT).

The Best/Worst 8 Dollars We Spent In Disney World

The Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney has this great marketing ploy where they basically force you to hang out in their gift shop while you wait to be seated for your meal. It's a really cool gift shop with lifesized animals that move, so it's actually not that bad of an experience. Anyway, we spent about 35 minutes there on our first night in Disney World, and Jackson fell in love with this hideous, remarkably real looking snake. I should add that Matt and I are both terribly disgusted by snakes, and my fear actually borders on a true phobia. So the fact that we purchased this creature for Jackson is a sign of how obsessed we are with our child (if the fact that we've devoted an entire blog to parenting him didn't already clue you in). Matt got the snake as a surprise for him while Jackson and I were being seated, and that animal did not leave his side for the next five days. It ate dinner with us, slept with us (or worse, slept curled up next to our bed in a horrifyingly realistic manner), and went on every ride that Disney has to offer. If you want to have a little fun with our Disney pictures, you can play a Where's Waldo type game with the snake. Here are few to get you started....

Luckily the snake has lost it's favored status once we got home, and frankly after spending 5 days in Disney with a realistic looking toy snake, I'm not as afraid of them anymore anyway.