Why, son, why? Why must we be up at 5 a.m. today? The questions rolled over in my mind a hundred times... that is, when I could keep myself awake as my 15 month old climbed up and down from the couch on which my body deeply wanted to drift back off to sleep. He is a pretty sweet baby in the mornings. He has always been an early riser unlike the other three of us in our house. Recently he has taken to sleeping until 7 a.m. rather than his usual 6 a.m. wake up call. But not today! Today he made up for those few days of sleeping in, and so there we were up at 5 a.m.
I stumbled into the kitchen and poured him a sippy cup of milk. Then I grumbled my way back to the couch to hopefully sit, cuddle, and soothe him back to sleep. I did not turn on many lights and definitely no television, thinking that eventually he would get the idea. Then I realized he needed a dry diaper, so up again. Dry diaper and back to the couch. We sat, he drank. Then the milk was gone and he was fussy. So I stumbled back to the kitchen to acquire more milk and also get him a breakfast bar. I lay back on the couch trying to close my eyes (at least one eye while I kept the other on him). Then he began to play the up/down game... up on the couch, down off the couch.
Urgh, maybe I should go wake up my husband for his turn of early morning duty... but then he'd just turn on the TV and go back to sleep while my son stared enamored at the bubetube.. so no, I'll stick it out.
By six o'clock he was bringing out the books. Once, twice, I'll read them; by the third time, I'm getting frustated. Surely this kid wants to go back to bed. I lie there glaring at him. "I love you," I say, "but don't you want to get a little more sleep before the sun comes up." Finally, at 6:20 a.m. he goes toward the stairs to his room and grunts his usual "ehh."
Aha! I ask, "want to go back to bed?" I pick him up and begin up the stairs. "Bed," he repeats, "Bed!" YES, exhausted and trudging myself to his bedroom, my son has tossed me a "mommy bone"-- not just sleep but a new word. My son can say "bed!"
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Catching up (The WDW planning saga)
So as my mind starts to drift toward my family's ambitious road-trip adventure to Southern California in four months, I thought it was about time that I finally post everything I put together for the kids and grandparents last December at DisneyWorld. Please keep in mind that these few articles were basically journal entries to myself written at the time of planning (relatively this time last year).
Planning Walt Disney World with 2 Kids, 2 Parents, and 4 Grandparents
Part I Room reservations
The following is a run-down of the process it took to plan the overall dynamics of our son’s first “official” WDW trip…
My booking window (exactly seven months prior to our date of check-in) was here and I was primed and ready to make our reservations at the new Bay Lake Towers at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. However, I had no idea how complicated the actual reservations would be.
I was planning for two grandparents with us part of the time (four nights) and two grandparents with us the whole time (six nights), plus hubby, myself and the boys. Of course, simply calling and asking for three rooms over X dates wasn’t going to cut it. This was going to take some work and adaptation to our needs in conjunction with what was available.
After about a week of deliberation and calls back and forth with DVC (Disney Vacation Club), I found a plan. We booked a studio for four nights, and a two bedroom villa for six nights with a drastic mixture of points and cash payments (Day 1-points; Day 2 & 3 - cash; Day 4-points; Day 5- cash; Day 6- points). You would not believe what I went through to get that finalized. The Disney people were always helpful, just a lot of hoops and coordination with availability and family. But we got it set! This was at approximately 210 days out. Next, we just had to wait until our 90 day window to book dining reservations!
Part II Dining Reservations
In the meantime, I began planning. I use an excel spreadsheet for all our travel plans. I did this even before we had kids. My husband and I have traveled with and without schedules, and after our last unscheduled vacation, he assured me that my scheduling was the best way to go. So I began looking at the possible plans – I knew the first day had to be the
I started with basics: meal times and parade/show schedules available. I decided to go with the Dining Plan so that there was never a concern about who picked up the check, and because of my in-depth planning, I knew I could easily make it worth the money. So I selected a few choice character meals –
On the 90th day prior to our check-in at Bay Lake Resort I was up at 4:45 a.m. for the reservation office to open in
In the course of that day, I called back once to make nine more dining reservations. Then over the next week I called and made four more. I then called and booked a couple of meals just for my father and his wife, and I booked one more reservation online. Scarily, 30 days out I still had one reservation that I hadn’t booked for my in-laws, but they didn’t seem that keen on what they wanted to do which made it a little difficult on me. Surely, I can get a reservation for two squeezed in somewhere (eyebrow raised). In total, I made 17 reservations for our party over a total seven night stay – and a mixed bag at that, some for parties of two, some for eight, some for six and one for four.
Then began the coordination of more dynamics and more questions: who goes with the grandchildren and when, who keeps which child, who sleeps in, who gets up early, when do we relax, can we make it from Fantasmic! to the Spirit of Aloha Dinner Show in an hour? The questions go on and on. However, all of that said, I have the schedule set and with 30 days out I started on the smaller details: grocery lists, airport transfers, packing lists, and the daily countdown for a 3 year old.
Budgeting vacation and Christmas at the same time
One art in traveling is learning to plan and budget wisely, especially if you have the crazy idea of traveling around the holidays. If you are anything like me, you may often use your credit card to pay for a vacation and you may also use it to purchase the endless list of Christmas gifts. Put these two major purchase times together and you have the making for a credit card bill that is near impossible to pay off.
Fortunately for me, we have been planning our Disney World trip for months. So beginning in July, I started analyzing my credit card billing cycle – on my Disney Visa card. I made plans to buy early Christmas presents, space out vacation purchases such as tickets, and also started collecting a few gift cards for spending at the Parks – all the while adding up reward points/dollars for our vacation. One money saving opportunity because of my preparation and our length of stay, I am saving $50 per ticket by not adding the park hopper. It is funny, I consider myself pretty frugal, but when it comes to Disney I want to experience so much. I worry if I have gone overboard on this trip. I have tried to cut back where I can like with the tickets, and I have also spaced out my purchases over five months so as not to take a huge hit when we are in the parks. When all is settled, I will have only six Christmas presents to buy in December (four of those are members of my traveling party and I plan to get their presents at WDW) and my Disney World charges will hopefully total only $1200 – most of that going toward the Deluxe Dining Plan I chose for my family -- which can be offset by whatever we have left on our gift cards and reward card.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Guilty Pleasures
Sometimes "a girl has to do what a girl has to do," or so the saying goes. For me it is more along the lines of "a mom has to find sanity where a mom can find sanity." And for this I have recently turned to what I call my “guilty pleasures.” These involve reading, watching, and planning. Allow me to explain…
As a child I was never a fan of reading. Despite having an English teacher for a mother, Cliffs Notes were my friend to put it mildly. It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I discovered one really could read for pleasure. I found this by reading Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as I prepared for a summer course in England. It is still my all time favorite and I reread it when I am bored, which sadly is a rarity. But the not having time element brought me to the state of reading as a guilty pleasure. I have discovered that I am not a “lay it on the night stand” kind of reader. Once I start, it must be finished. And so my recent guilty pleasure has been Mary Balogh books which I tend to start and push everything else aside. Balogh is a Regency era romance novelist. So far this summer I believe I have read seven of her works. And the last one, A Matter of Class, I read twice because the twist at the end made rereading the beginning even more fun. So now I just need to get to a Barnes and Noble which carries some of her older works so I can continue this terrific guilty pleasure. I don’t know what I will do when she runs out of books; however, I think she has around seventy so it isn’t bound to happen anytime soon although moderation is key because, again, I tend to neglect everything when I start reading.
Next, there is a new television show I have gotten into and for the life of me I don’t know why. I call it the teenage version of Desperate Housewives. Pretty Little Liars comes on ABC Family on Tuesday nights. Again, I don’t know why I am watching a show about silly 16 year old girls and their all too intricate lives of messing with older men, confused sexuality, and a dead friend who is haunting them via texts. Seriously, why do I care about this show again? Okay it’s got mystery; it is a far cry from my thirty-something life with children; and it is nothing like my teenage years, so why not?
Third is my obsession with planning trips. Seriously, I might chart a trip to the grocery store if it took more than ten minutes to get there. Planning travel used to be a hobby when my husband and I went on vacation; however, now it is an all out quest. I research restaurants, attractions, hotels and stops for the kids. I budget, not down to the penny yet but I am afraid the time may be coming. I plan so much that I even plan in flexibility to my schedule. Isn’t that ironic on some level? But my husband likes it and I feel like we get the most out of our trips this way. Plus when traveling with two small children, it is always best to look ahead because you will never see everything that is coming. So when I get stressed I plan the next trip even if it is six months away.
Strangely I now realize that “doing” seems to be glaringly absent from my guilty pleasures. Now I wonder why that is?
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