Grandbabies 8.1 - A Disney Adventure with Nya
Don Jennings
Since the spring of 2001, we've been taking our grandchildren to Disney
World, one at a time, generally the spring or summer before they enter
kindergarten. At that age, everything is still magic and we can tailor the
trip to whatever turns out to be the most interesting to that child. We
never know what that's going to be until we get there. Elysia watched
rabbits and fed ducks, Alexis spent hours and hours meeting characters,
Serina did everything except the things that were loud or dark or fast or
high or spinny (and some of those as well), Haley loved all the parades,
Caitlyn was social director for our group, Gavin was into pin trading,
educational things, and striking up conversations with people, and Colby was
focused on rides and water. It's March 2009 now and it's Nya's turn, as she'll
turn five in three months and go to school next fall. We're getting the
impression that this trip may be all about the princesses.
We've been a little apprehensive about this trip for some time, not knowing
quite how it's going to go. Just over a year ago, Nya's daddy died, so it's
just been Nya and her mom and her little sister since. We're not sure if
that's going to make her miss home even more than the kids usually do, and
until a few months ago, weren't even sure she was going to be willing to
make the trip. She's never been one to talk on the phone, and starting
about six months ago Laurie would ask to talk to Nya whenever she was on the
phone with her mom. Mom would say "Nya, do you want to talk to Grandma?",
and Laurie would hear the little voice replying "No thank you." But after
we saw her at Christmas and she had a chance to hear our other grandbabies
talk about their trips, she's been talking on the phone with Grandma quite
regularly and seems very excited about the trip. Especially meeting Ariel
and Belle.
The day has come to launch our trip and Laurie meets Nya and her mom at a
mall about two hours away, halfway between our houses. Nya is extremely
excited to see her new Belle dress for the first time, and is very much
looking forward to our Disney adventure. They get to our house about the
same time I get home from work, so I get to see her try on the Belle dress
before I have to leave for a school board meeting. In Nya's expert opinion,
the dress is beautiful.
While I'm at my meeting, Laurie and Nya go through her clothes to take
inventory and pick out what she's wearing tomorrow. It seems her mom bought
her some new clothes, and "she made me jump up and down in them to make sure
the shorts wouldn't fall down."
By the time I get home from my meeting, Nya and Bear (a loosely stuffed bear
that's bigger than she is, about four feet tall and two feet wide) are
stretched out sideways across my side of the bed sound asleep, so rather
than wake either of them in the middle of the night in a foreign land, I
take one for the team and head for our guest bedroom.
Day 1, Airplane, Hollywood Studios
The alarm rings out at 6:10 this morning and Nya pops out of bed brightly,
ready for the day. We stop for coffee at our local shop, and I'm reminded
that I just recently finished Colby's trip report and mentioned that he was
"walking on the edge of the curb, like every kid ever." On our way back out
to the car, Nya's walking on the edge of the curb, like every kid ever. Our
ride to the airport is a little over an hour, and she sleeps most of the
way. She gets her first ever bus ride between our parking lot and the
terminal, and giggles the whole way. We think the primary excitement comes
from not wearing a seat belt and wobbling through all the turns. She's used
to her car seat, which has about a twelve-point harness that took us several
minutes to secure and would make Mark Martin feel safe. It's a pretty low
speed bus, but still qualifies as the first thrill ride of our trip.
Our luggage is a little bulkier than usual this time. The kids usually have
one of those munchkin roller suitcases they can wrangle by themselves,
because little kids' clothes are surprisingly compact. But this time we
also packed Bear (who Nya graciously agreed would be fine in the suitcase)
and about nine dolls. We didn't realize until later that at least a couple
of the dolls had been kidnapped, since Nya let it slip one day that "My
sister might be missing them."
At the airport it's time for Nya's first ever escalator ride. You would
think that one of the veteran travelers in our party would have thought of
an elevator, but we goofily try to organize ourselves onto the escalator
with three full-sized suitcases, one small suitcase/laptop bag, a backpack,
a stroller, and an I'm-not-sure-about-this four-year-old. I take two of the
big cases up the escalator and park them, run back down the other escalator,
then make a second trip up with the girls. By the time we get to the top,
there is already a security person checking out the 'abandoned' bags. I get
there in time to keep them from being carted away, but another airline
employee quickly walks up and offers us some assistance. She does a very
good job of concealing her thoughts that we must be a bunch of rubes in the
big city for the first time.
Once we've checked our bags, we take the sidewalk outside on the way down to
our gate, and Nya is fascinated by the small planes we see taking off. She
can't wait to be on her own plane. And when we get to our gate, she's quite
excited to see just how big her plane is going to be. After you've flown a
few times, you don't realize there are cool things to see out the window at
your gate, but we've got a raised baggage conveyor over here and a lowered
one there, a couple mobile staircases, two baggage cart trains, a bunch of
orange cones of assorted sizes, guys in orange jackets walking around. To
her little four-year-old eyes, we've got everything here but Waldo.
It's probably a combination of being tired from getting up too early and
stress over the flight, but Nya's sucking her thumb now. We'll learn soon
enough that this is a sign we have to pay attention to, but it's still cute
the way she does it (and has since she was an infant). First, it's the left
thumb that goes in the mouth. Now you need to picture Scarlett O'Hara with
the back of her right hand over her forehead saying "Whatever shall I do?"
Now you just slide that hand down until it's right in front of the other
hand, 'concealing' the thumb-sucking act completely. Like I said, it's been
that way since infancy, I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it, and
it still amazes me.
We thought she'd be very clingy, but as we're sitting at the gate, she
slides in on the other side of a couple people sitting six seats down from
us, which prompts our first talk about always being where you can see both
of us and getting permission to check something out. It turns out there was
a baby there, so I can understand the attraction. So after our chat, she's
watching the tarmac activity from the floor over by the window, about ten
feet away, where she can see both of us.
I sometimes forget that four-year-olds are just learning basic things like
blowing their noses, so we occasionally are lucky enough to hear random
things like "It's a really big one!"
She's just a bit nervous as the plane starts taxiing, but the takeoff doesn't
seem to bother her much at all. The houses (and pools) look kind of cool,
but it's overcast today and we're in the clouds before we know it. We're
over North Carolina when we finally clear the cloud cover and Nya gets a
chance to look out the window at something non-white. "WOW, you can see the
WHOLE WORLD from here!!" Our descent in Florida is extremely rough, one of
the roughest I've experienced. Laurie's whiter than normal and bravely
avoiding the Home Alone Face, but Nya's watching out the window, giggling
like crazy and saying "This is FUN, you're right, I don't miss my mom."
We get to Pop Century without incident, and Nya is loving the big signs out
front. And she's skipping. "I miss my mom, but not that much." Don't
worry Mom, we haven't got to bedtime yet. Our room is ready and we drop off
our luggage there, and she must be very anxious to get to the park. She's
standing by the door jiggling the handle as we're getting our tickets ready.
There's nobody in line at our bus stop, which probably means we just missed
one and have to kill twenty minutes climbing under all the ropes and around
all the sign posts. Good thing some of us are built for that.
Usually, it takes the kids about half the week to become independent when
they're actually on the bus. Nya apparently doesn't have that kind of time,
and heads right for the back corner seat. We're sitting next to the back
door, about four seats away and across the aisle. We figure she'll rush
back to us when the bus gets crowded, but that doesn't happen either so we
have to insist.
She's not crazy about holding Grandma's hand going into the park, but we
point out to her that it's pretty crowded and we don't want any of us to
lose any of us. Makes sense to her, and she happily skips up the street
hand in hand, checking out all the sights along the way. We're about three
minutes late for this showing of Playhouse Disney, which we would have made
if we left the room when Nya wanted and caught that other bus.
So now we're in line for the Little Mermaid, not sure whether we'll see this
show or the one in a half hour. Laurie's already been faced with an
adjustment, since Nya is the first of our grandkids who prefers holding
hands with interlocking fingers. Laurie gives it her best shot, but those
are seriously small fingers so Nya's going to have to make the adjustment on
this one. This is the second line we've been in today (the other was
boarding our airplane), and each time she maintains a position about and
inch and a half behind the guy in front of her. That can't be the optimum
position at her height, since she's right at butt level, plus in this case
it actually puts her underneath the guy's backpack. But she's got Grandma's
hand, and she's dragging her up into position.
It looks like we're sure to get in until a flock of Fast Passers fly by us.
Now that we're just standing around not doing anything, and with nothing new
to see, she misses her mom. We'll replay this scenario all week. We do
make it into this showing though, and she's grinning from ear to ear. She
likes the part where we get wet going "under the sea", but wants to make
sure that's as far under the sea as we're going. And when the Hot
Crustacean Band starts playing, she asks if they're going to stay up there
and we're staying back here. We had forgotten that, but it's something
almost every one of the kids has needed to sort out at their first show -
are they going to get near me, or is this safe space? (That's not just kids
either, I know adults who won't go to the Hoop-De-Doo show for fear of
becoming part of the show ;-)
She's been giggling the whole time, but when Ursula comes out, she slides
way back into the seat and the tears start to come. I don't blame her,
Ursula's one of the villainest villains there is. But in the end it's all
smiles again, especially with that awesome dog Max.
We have to make sure we see the Beauty and the Beast show, because Belle is
Nya's favorite princess. It doesn't start for forty minutes, so we'll have
time to get something to eat beforehand. On the way over, Nya starts
sucking her thumb and Laurie makes the mistake of casually telling her "Take
that out of your mouth, we'll get you something else to put in there." Well
now the crocodile tears really start to come, and she wails "I want my
mommy," and we offer to get her on the phone but she sobs "I don't want to
talk to her on the phone, I want to talk to her at my house." Several
lessons learned (or relearned here) - changing habits isn't Grandma and
Grandpa's job; no habits should be addressed during a Disney vacation; a
sure-fire way to keep life from getting worse is to stay busy; and when a
four-year-old is trying her best to hang on by an emotional thread, give her
a little slack.
We get over to the Ranch Market and find a table, check out our First Time
Visitor pin, order our pizzas, and laugh a lot. Life is good again. You
get a whole different set of questions from a four-year-old than you do from
a five-year-old. "Do squirrels spray?" No. "Just skunks?" Yes. She
watches the Beauty and the Beast show from my lap, and she is absolutely
locked in for the entire twenty-five minutes. She claps after every song,
and it's not just the polite everybody-is-clapping-so-I-will applause. This
is "That was AWESOME" applause. At the end, she is vigorously clapping and
you can tell that she just loved the show.
On our way out of the theater, she is working on organizing her week in her
mind. "On Day 2, what princesses are we going to eat with?" Well, I think
that's Day 6, but it never hurts to try.
We were going to try to see the Muppets tonight, but by the time we've
wandered over to that end of the park, Nya is really dragging. The stress
of packing all those firsts into one day is exhausting. She isn't hungry,
but the shared mini-pizza wasn't enough for us big kids, so we stop at the
Back Lot Express for dinner. We find a table on the porch while Laurie's
getting the food and she's giggling hysterically at that Elephant Walker
squirting water on everyone. Until she suddenly has Emergency Eyes and has
to go to the bathroom, RIGHT NOW. I take her inside and hand her off to
Laurie at the food line, and disaster is avoided. Laurie goes into the
stall with her to help, until Nya informs her "Grandma, I like to be lonely
when I poop." Well, I think we all do.
"Does the pool at our hotel freeze when it gets dark?"
We've finished our dinner and she's enjoying her fifteenth misting from the
elephant, telling me "Grandpa, it's really fun, you should do it!" Energy
levels do seem to come and go, don't they. Some random guy just walked up
with his three-year-old, and the unsuspecting little guy just got hit with
the edge of the spray. He's going to take care of it though, as he pulls
out his brand new light saber and assumes a battle pose in anticipation of
the next one. His dad and I can hardly contain ourselves.
It's seems we do have enough energy to go down and see the Muppet Movie.
She's really getting a kick out of the preshow, especially when Rizzo comes
out and tells everyone he's Mickey Mouse. "He's not Mickey Mouse, he looks
like a magician." She giggles throughout the movie itself, but has the
glasses on and off about thirty times, only slightly more on than off. Her
conclusion is "That was really a FUN show."
We're taking a shortcut from the show exit to the front of the park when I
remember we left the stroller over by the fountain. I innocently suggest
that we cut through this store to retrieve it, and Laurie gets her own
Emergency Eyes and says "NO!!!", and the look on her face is just precious.
There's silent sobbing of her own behind it, saying "DON'T MAKE ME RANDOM
SHOP AT THE END OF THE DAY!!" Sorry, wasn't thinking.
Nya loves Miss Piggy's fountain as much as I do, and wants to spend some
time here that we didn't take on the way in. What she'd really like to do
is walk the stone ledge around the fountain. I immediately invoke the
billiards rule that one foot has to be touching the ground at all times,
which will allow her to dip her hand in the water but (with any luck) not
get hurt. (This also reminds us of the rule her mom and dad used to invoke
when they were camping on the weekend. "The emergency room is closed on the
weekend, so you can't do that.")
We're walking out past Indiana Jones when Laurie congratulates Nya on not
being whiny during the whole evening. She informs us that "I'm only whiny
when I'm nervous. See?" And she illustrates by giving us what I would have
to describe as jazz hands.
In front of the 50's Prime Time, she asks us if we can do that spinny thing.
It takes a couple beats for us to realize she's talking about the hula hoop
some kids are playing with out front. Well, that's a no and a yes for us,
and you can guess which is which. As for Nya, "I tried it once with my
daddy, but I couldn't do it either."
We always tell the kids we don't do shopping until Day 7, but we
preauthorized some specific shopping for this trip, a Belle doll for Nya and
a doll for her sister as well. This store right on the corner across from
the tip board should have something. What we get is one of those mouth open
vibrating from head to toe moments, as she spots the perfect Belle up on the
top shelf. Amelia will be excited about her Princess Minnie, as well. As
we're strollering out of the park, she looks up and says "This was a really
fun day at Disney, Grandma." You might think we didn't get our money's
worth out of a park admission, but the two main things she wanted to see
were Belle and Ariel and we did both of those right off the bat (and Belle
even went home with us), so it's all good.
"Which princesses have shoes?" Grandma laughs, and she thinks all of them
do. "Not Ariel, she has fins."
She must be really tired, because while we're waiting for the bus she asks
if she can swim in the morning instead of tonight. No problem. She's the
first of our grandchildren who takes baths instead of showers, and she is
just giggling and talking up a storm in there, telling the soap and shower
curtain all about the exciting things she's seen.
Winding down at 9pm consists of playing with the dolls on the bed. Hannah
Montana and Belle are in a surprisingly long embrace, and we're informed
that they're getting married. That certainly should spike ratings. Nya has
decided that she's going to sleep in her own bed tonight with Bear, and we
decide to see how that works. Except that Laurie decides to join her after
she falls asleep. She says it's so Nya will be comforted when she wakes up
in the night, but you and I both know that the transition from our king size
bed at home to Pop Century's full size bed is more than she could make.
Animal Kingdom tomorrow, on our first full day.
Lisa Cubbon
Keane
<don...@almost-ptd.net> wrote:
>Winding down at 9pm consists of playing with the dolls on the bed. Hannah
>Montana and Belle are in a surprisingly long embrace, and we're informed
>that they're getting married. That certainly should spike ratings.
Ya' think?
Great report, Don. If you lived in Florida, I'd ask you to adopt me.
Keane, waiting for 8.2...
--
When stars are born, They possess a gift or two,
One of them is this, They have the power to make a wish come true...
-- Wishes
Visit my site: http://keanespics.com
Paul
We solve the "I miss mommy" problem (and several others) by bringing
the mom and dad along. This means we need a 2-bedroom villa, but we
don't mind.
--
Paul in NH (PSS)
p s s a w y e r at c o m c a s t dot n e t
Bashful
> It looks like we're sure to get in until a flock of Fast Passers fly by
> us. Now that we're just standing around not doing anything, and with
> nothing new to see, she misses her mom. We'll replay this scenario all
> week. We do make it into this showing though, and she's grinning from
> ear to ear. She likes the part where we get wet going "under the sea",
> but wants to make sure that's as far under the sea as we're going. And
> when the Hot Crustacean Band starts playing, she asks if they're going
> to stay up there and we're staying back here. We had forgotten that,
> but it's something almost every one of the kids has needed to sort out
> at their first show - are they going to get near me, or is this safe
> space? (That's not just kids either, I know adults who won't go to the
> Hoop-De-Doo show for fear of becoming part of the show ;-)
It took 10 years, but I did finally brave the Hoop-Dee-Doo, LOL. (Yes,
I can totally understand where she's coming from.)
Great trip report!
--
Kitty (TDC Bashful)
Lauriej
between her and us. That is what we really get out of these trips. We
really bond and get to know each other without a parent or sibling's
judgement or influence.
Thanks for reading.
Laurie
Sandi Femino
"Don Jennings" <don...@almost-ptd.net> wrote:
> It's March 2009 now
No it isn't, it's Dec.!
Didn't I ask for this report in a TIMELY manner?
Do you need a calendar? ;-)
Seriously, Don,
another Grandbabies TR! Hooray!
--
Don Jennings
> Great trip report. We have taken three of our four grandkids so far.
>
> We solve the "I miss mommy" problem (and several others) by bringing
> the mom and dad along. This means we need a 2-bedroom villa, but we
> don't mind.
We only ever spend time with the grandkids in the family setting. None of
them are only children, and you'd be surprised how different they can be
when they're on their own and apart from siblings or parents. You get to
see their true personalities that way. Of the eight we've taken, three have
turned out to be very different children from what we had seen before, and
we're very glad to have been able to establish a real relationship with them
early.
MitchB
princesses. I'm sure Nya will have a blast! Can't wait to read 8.2!
Michelle
"Don Jennings" <don...@almost-ptd.net> wrote in message
news:4b3c1424$0$17967$ce5e...@news-radius.ptd.net...
Rudeney
> Day 0, Preparing
>
I'm just catching up from the holidays and getting aroud to reading
this...so sorry about the late replies!
> It seems her mom
> bought her some new clothes, and "she made me jump up and down in them
> to make sure the shorts wouldn't fall down."
LOL! The mental image of that is just hilarious!
> By the time I get home from my meeting, Nya and Bear (a loosely stuffed
> bear that's bigger than she is, about four feet tall and two feet wide)
> are stretched out sideways across my side of the bed sound asleep, so
> rather than wake either of them in the middle of the night in a foreign
> land, I take one for the team and head for our guest bedroom.
I've spent many a night in the guest room due to Katie staying over.
Even now, at age 15, she still sometimes wants to sleep with "Gran".
> At the airport it's time for Nya's first ever escalator ride.
Huh? She's never been on one at the mall?
> You would
> think that one of the veteran travelers in our party would have thought
> of an elevator, but we goofily try to organize ourselves onto the
> escalator with three full-sized suitcases, one small suitcase/laptop
> bag, a backpack, a stroller, and an I'm-not-sure-about-this
> four-year-old. I take two of the big cases up the escalator and park
> them, run back down the other escalator, then make a second trip up with
> the girls. By the time we get to the top, there is already a security
> person checking out the 'abandoned' bags. I get there in time to keep
> them from being carted away, but another airline employee quickly walks
> up and offers us some assistance. She does a very good job of
> concealing her thoughts that we must be a bunch of rubes in the big city
> for the first time.
Yes, losing your bags to security would not be a good way to start the trip!
> Once we've checked our bags, we take the sidewalk outside on the way
> down to our gate, and Nya is fascinated by the small planes we see
> taking off. She can't wait to be on her own plane. And when we get to
> our gate, she's quite excited to see just how big her plane is going to
> be. After you've flown a few times, you don't realize there are cool
> things to see out the window at your gate, but we've got a raised
> baggage conveyor over here and a lowered one there, a couple mobile
> staircases, two baggage cart trains, a bunch of orange cones of assorted
> sizes, guys in orange jackets walking around. To her little
> four-year-old eyes, we've got everything here but Waldo.
OK, I guess I have mentality of a four year old because I love to watch
all the "things" going on at the airport.
> I sometimes forget that four-year-olds are just learning basic things
> like blowing their noses, so we occasionally are lucky enough to hear
> random things like "It's a really big one!"
LOL!
> Winding down at 9pm consists of playing with the dolls on the bed.
> Hannah Montana and Belle are in a surprisingly long embrace, and we're
> informed that they're getting married. That certainly should spike
> ratings.
8-0
> Nya has decided that she's going to sleep in her own bed
> tonight with Bear, and we decide to see how that works. Except that
> Laurie decides to join her after she falls asleep. She says it's so Nya
> will be comforted when she wakes up in the night, but you and I both
> know that the transition from our king size bed at home to Pop Century's
> full size bed is more than she could make. Animal Kingdom tomorrow, on
> our first full day.
Don, this is so good - I can't wait to read day 2!
--
- RODNEY
Next WDW Vacation?
Who knows!
Need to know more about RADP (rec.arts.disney.parks)?
Rudeney
> In article <4b3c1424$0$17967$ce5e...@news-radius.ptd.net>,
> "Don Jennings" <don...@almost-ptd.net> wrote:
>
>> It's March 2009 now
>
> No it isn't, it's Dec.!
> Didn't I ask for this report in a TIMELY manner?
> Do you need a calendar? ;-)
I think he's just trying to top Steve and Amanda, both of whom are known
for tardy TR's! ;-)
> Seriously, Don,
> another Grandbabies TR! Hooray!
Yeah, I don't really care how long it takes Don to write the T - my
biggest fears is that one day, he's going to run out of 5yo
grandchildren! :-(
Laura Gilbreath
Don Jennings <don...@almost-ptd.net> wrote:
Yay, another Grandbaby trip report!!! Looking forward to reading the
rest of it!
Laura
**************************************************************************
Email: lgil at lgil dot net or remove "REMOVETHIS" from "Reply to" address.
Visit Tigger's Vacation Page:
http://www.travelswithtigger.com
Elizabeth
> Yeah, I don't really care how long it takes Don to write the T - my
> biggest fears is that one day, he's going to run out of 5yo
> grandchildren! :-(
Not to spoil the ending for you, but the 10 yo trips are coming :)!!
Patty Winter
In article <4b42dc4b$0$15479$c36e...@unlimited.newshosting.com>,
And after that, maybe the oldest grandkids will have some 5-year-old
great-grandkids. :-) We've got Don and Laurie's vacations mapped out
for them for years to come...
Patty
Rudeney
Yes, I saw that, and I can't wait, but there is just something special
about the 5yo trips. I think when Don runs out of 5yo grandbabies, we
need to rent some for him!
Lisa Cubbon
> Elizabeth wrote:
>> On 2010-01-04 14:07:52 -0600, Rudeney <rud...@mickeypics.com> said:
>>
>>> Yeah, I don't really care how long it takes Don to write the T - my
>>> biggest fears is that one day, he's going to run out of 5yo
>>> grandchildren! :-(
>>
>> Not to spoil the ending for you, but the 10 yo trips are coming :)!!
>>
>
> Yes, I saw that, and I can't wait, but there is just something special
> about the 5yo trips. I think when Don runs out of 5yo grandbabies, we
> need to rent some for him!
>