Nobody Knows Anything

When we got invited up to Tahoe for winter break, Darin ended up not being able to take the time off, so I took the kids up alone. I sent him a message: “Spring break is April 12 through April 16. Take the days off now.” He immediately filed for vacation, and we talked about perhaps going to Disney World. Extravagant, yes, but we haven’t taken a long vacation for a while. So our plans was: We would leave on the weekend, spend the week in Orlando, fly home the following weekend, using two days for travel.

Then Darin said, “Oh, um, there’s a WebKit conference on Monday and Tuesday of that week.”

Anaheim it is, then.

We decided to drive down late Tuesday night (after Darin’s conference let out) and then spend several days puttering around Disneyland and California Adventure. We took the kids here two years ago, and we figured they’d enjoy it even more this time. I really think they did. They still enjoy being there (some of their friends are already bored with it), and they were willing to try new stuff now.

Some random observations from this visit, in no particular order:

Disneyland

• My 10-year-old daughter enjoys going on rollercoaster rides as much as or more than my 10-year-old self did. Of course, one problem is: I am no longer 10-years-old, and they are not nearly as much fun. I still go on them with her though.
• Sophia would go on Space Mountain non-stop, if given the choice and the ability. I’m assuming that on our next visit to a Magic Kingdom she will have both, as she will be old enough to skedaddle and do whatever the hell she likes, parents or no parents.
• My 7-almost-8-year-old son would like all rollercoasters to cease existence as of right now, thankyouverymuch. So I don’t think his older sister will be dragging him along with her in the future.
• Captain EO is hilarious, and not in a good way. It is SO Eighties that at one point a monster morphs into a dancer with a gelled-up pouf and the audience laughed. We finally see the evil queen morph into Anjelica Huston…and immediately Michael Jackson’s head fills the frame, as though we can’t possibly focus on someone else for even a second. And the song redefines forgettable.
• Sophia said, “I couldn’t tell if Captain EO was a boy or a girl.” So many things I left unsaid at that point.
• Darin managed to deduce that the voice of the pilot for Star Tours is Paul Reubens, and the Internet backs him up. Therefore this information is TRUE.
• The kids cannot get enough of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Some things never change. It is still funny to hear the voice of Tony the Tiger in both places.
• My kids have no idea who Tony the Tiger is. Go me!
• Two years ago, at the Haunted Mansion, Simon looked at the paintings in the spooky hallway (the ones that change from things like a beautiful lady to a cat lady when the lighting flashes) and said, “Projection.” In his 5-year-old voice, with a little boy lisp, it came out, “Pwojeckshun,” and it was hilarious. He is, of course, right. Which is kind of amazing for a 5-year-old in the first place.
• The part of the Haunted Mansion that features married couples where apparently the wives murdered the husbands: guys, violence isn’t any funnier directed toward men. In fact, it’s DISTURBING. (Oh, I see from Wikipedia I was right: I didn’t remember this bit from my childhood, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention two years ago, and it is in fact new.)
• Also a big fave: It’s a Small World! The classics, they never stop. Kind of hilarious that a bunch of dolls singing the same song over and over again would be so attractive, but it really is.

California Adventure

• Soarin’ Over California at California Adventure should be titled, “Stuff you will never have in Kansas, no matter how much Amazon Prime you have.” If you’re visiting California Adventure run, do not walk, to this attraction first.
• The Aladdin stage show is really good. I was expecting some kind of halfassed song and dance thing with a fog machine, and it’s practically a Broadway musical with special effects.
• The “Turtle Talk with Crush!” animation show is hilarious. There’s a large screen, and Crush from “Finding Nemo” swims by to talk to everyone. Then he picks out people in the audience to talk to and ask questions of. The animation is seamless—I have no idea how Crush moves and appears to be looking at various people—and the actor doing it was very talented.
• Lots of vegetarian options for meals here, btw. (Dunno about vegan, but vegetarian definitely.) Also: lots of places to get an alcoholic drink, in case you can’t get through your day without a cocktail. So if you’re finishing your day at Disneyland, bummed that for another year running you haven’t gotten into Club 33 and you really need to tie one on, hie thee across the plaza to California Adventure and drink up.

Other

• I know it’s beaten into them. I know they’re trained to do this and it’s a manipulation technique and I’m being played. But oh my GOD was every single staff member I dealt with at our hotel wonderful and cheerful. Before the trip I called to tell them that we were going to be arriving hella late, and the young man I talked to was just so happy to answer my questions and put lots of notes about my requests in my file! And every time I called the front desk the operators were so thrilled to be helping me! The technique seriously works: I felt really good about staying there! I can think of so many businesses that could take a fucking page from the Disney indoctrination technique.
• The Grand Californian (where we stayed) is really a good hotel. (Well, except for the toilet in our room, which kept malfunctioning. But I assume that wasn’t a feature.) The design is great, the distance to the parks and to Downtown Disney is excellent, and the way that so many rooms have a queen plus bunk beds just screams, “We know who our clientele are and what they want!”
• We were in the park early one morning and I saw a Disney cast member (not “employee”! that’s “cast member” to you!) walking by in costume holding a Starbucks cup. If she’d been texting on an iPhone she could have hit the Corporate Hegemony Trifecta.
• If you live in Southern California and are like, “WTF? Darin and Diane didn’t let us know they were coming?” please to take comfort in the fact that we didn’t tell anyone. We spent the entire time just as a foursome, and it worked out really, really well (better than I expected, if I may be so honest). We spent all day every day together, except for when one of us took the kids to the pool and the other one stayed in the room.
• The Napa Rose restaurant is really good. Ate there twice. I recommend the starters over the entrees, but then again, I was completely full on two starters.
• The Steakhouse 55 restaurant at the Disneyland Hotel is okay. I think the praise it’s gotten is a little overblown, or maybe people are just so happy to find a place that’s halfway decent around here.
• The Blue Bayou at Pirates was pretty good, though expensive. You have to ask to sit by the bayou though! Epic fail on our part.
• Man, has the Disneyland Hotel changed since the first time I stayed there. The first time, when I flew out from the East Coast with my family (I was probably…8?), there was one hotel. The second time, when I was 10 or 11, there were two hotels and a big lagoon where we had paddle boats. Now it’s a gigantic conference center with three towers and no paddle boats. Plus all of these other hotels (including the Grand Californian, where we stayed.) And Downtown Disney. And…well, it’s just quite impressive what they’ve done with the place.

And now the question I’ll leave you with: after you visit all of the continents (including Antartica) in It’s A Small World, you visit an area where we get a repeat of a number of the dolls…only this time, everyone’s wearing all white. Does the last section represent the Afterlife?

Sophia has been an official two-wheeler since Tuesday—except she was riding the little toy bike she’s had since she was two (Darin calls it “the clown bike”), which didn’t exactly count. We kept encouraging her to try her “big” bike, the bike she got for her sixth birthday, but every time she got on it, she cried and said she was scared.

Yesterday she was riding on the clown bike and I once again idly asked, “Want to try your big bike?” “Okay!” she said, the way she has many, many times before. So I reluctantly dug it out of the shed (which is currently filled with varnish fumes, so being in there was unpleasant) and gave it to her. She walked it down to the street.

And took off.

She didn’t even need to start on the hill, which is how she got started on the clown bike. She just gave herself a push forward and started pedaling.

Now that she was using her big bike, she did not want to get off of it. After two hours I said she had to come in, because I was too tired to play traffic cop any more. (For a tiny street that could not serve as a thoroughfare by any remote stretch of the imagination, damn we get a lot of traffic.) She went out after dinner too.

First thing this morning she asked if she could bike after camp.

Now that she has her own wheels, we’re never going to see her again.

The big highlight of the past few days has been the Endless Sixth Birthday Celebration of someone who can’t possibly be 6, because didn’t I just take her home from the hospital?

(I could not get her to smile for a photo. I took lots of solo pictures of her, and in every one she looks more solemn than this. Most of the time she has a smile as bright as the sun on her, but apparently not for pictures Mommy takes.)

Sophia is 6 now, as she will be happy to tell you. In fact, her birthday has been the main subject of her conversation for the past two weeks. (Didn’t I used to have a little girl who’d run away at the sound of “Happy Birthday” being sung? Those days: over.) She’s wearing one of her new dresses to school today (“So that everyone can see how pretty I am”).

We had Birthday Week around here, because Sophia had last week off from school (and for some reason I hadn’t written Winter Break down on my calendar…errrrgggg), so we hung out together and did lots of things, including lots of things she wanted to do. On Friday, her actual birthday, I asked what she wanted for dinner, provided it wasn’t Chicken Dinosaurs, because that’s not a food for a family dinner. She announced she wanted roasted chicken legs, baked potatoes, and asparagus. She didn’t eat much of it, but I was happy that she knows enough about our dinner requirements to ask for those things. She didn’t even seem to mind that I didn’t have cake for her for after dinner.

Which was fine, because on Saturday we had her birthday party at Bamboola (an indoor playground place, with an arcade, a kid-habitrail, dress-up area, make-up area, water play area) with friends from Kindergarten and friends from preschool, and she seemed to have a complete blast. Periodically one of the kids would stop by me and ask, “Where’s Sophia?” I’d shrug and say, “I think she went thataway.” We had pizza and ice cream cake and everyone seemed to go home very happy.

Today is her party at school, so in preparation I made cupcakes — yes, from scratch. Sophia helped me. Well, she helped me a) taste the cupcakes, b) frost the cupcakes, and, oh yes, c) taste the frosting. In pretty much that order too.

I wanted to try out my new cake decorating kit, which is why the chocolate frosting is in a swirl, whereas the pink frosting has been ladled on. I made pink, purple, and blue frosting for her to decorate with, and before I let her loose with the cupcakes I wrapped her in my cooking apron. I expected she’d slather each cupcake with tons of frosting (see “frosting: tasting of,” above), but instead she’d put a reasonable amount on a cupcake and pronounce it done. She was so excited that her friends were going to get to have her cupcakes at school.

She’s writing (a lot — I gave her her own journal and she writes sentences in it), she’s painting, she can’t wait for us to assemble her birthday bike so she can ride around. (The front fork of the bike we bought at Target is too narrow, so I couldn’t put it together. We have to take the whole thing back. I said, “Hon, can we go to REI and buy one that’s already made?”) Most of the time she’s a great friend and playmate to her little brother, who thinks the world of her. Her kindergarten teacher says that not only is she very bright, but she’s one of the nicest kids in the class, friends with everyone. In fact, the teacher often pairs her with one of the kids who’s the most difficult to get along with, because Sophia deals with him just fine.

Currently, when she grows up, she wants to be a teacher and a mommy, and if you don’t think I’m seriously flattered by that, boy, do you have a lot to learn.

Six! My little girl is six! The years are so short. There are definitely times I wish my kids had a dial, so I could dial them back to when they were just little babies, to experience that once again, but since I can’t, I’m extraordinarily happy with the kids I have today. Even if one of them won’t smile for the camera.

Yesterday I found several pieces of writing Sophia had made on the kitchen table. One read, “Mr. Sure is going to a in inportit meting.” Another had a picture of a rocket ship with the legend “rokit ship.”

She hadn’t asked anyone for help on these. She’d just written them, sounding out the words. Evidently “Mr. Sure” is supposed to be “Mr. Star,” which is kind of weird because on the paper with the rocket ship she’s spelled “star” correctly several times. And “a in” is her spelling of “an.” And I have no idea what this important meeting is.

Still: I’m just amazed.

I know, I know: this is what kids are supposed to learn. Those are generic kids. This kid hasn’t done this before. She’s gone from knowing how to read a few words to this in a few short months.

She loves writing and drawing. She leaves writing and pictures all over the place. My supply of printing paper is dwindling rapidly. I bought her some Crayola washable markers and she started making elaborate pictures. It’s funny to watch how her symbols for various things change: hair on girls is now long lines on both sides, even for girls like herself who have short hair.

Didn’t I just bring her home from the hospital?

Her Highness the Most Excellent Sophia started Kindergarten yesterday. Somebody tell me how a baby I just brought home from the hospital can possibly be starting Kindergarten?

I looked at the list of stuff she’s supposed to know for Kindergarten. She was well past that level about 2 years ago. I looked at the list of the stuff she’s supposed to learn this year and, well, let’s see…she does not in fact know how to tell time on an analog clock yet. So we have that to look forward to.

We walk to school in the late morning. (I signed her up for the “afternoon” kindergarten because I don’t want to have to have her out the door by 7:45am any earlier than I have to, which turns out to be 1st grade.) So far she’s not pleased at the walk—”Mommy, I get tired!” It’s 6/10 of a mile each way. I think she’ll adapt. Also, extra exercise for me.

She’s been very excited about the whole Kindergarten thing for weeks, if not months. Now that it’s started she’s a little unsure about the whole thing—while we’ve run into preschool friends at the school, none of them are in her class. She’s outgoing, though: I don’t sense that she’ll have much trouble making friends. Which, let’s face it, is what this is all about, as far as I’m concerned.

(Pssst: Can someone please tell me how to put some space between the picture up there and the text next to it? I’ve been playing with the style sheets and html for 30 minutes now and seeing no improvement. Just a little space from the text, that’s all I want!)

I can’t remember where I’ve heard this—one of those old wives’ tales, undoubtedly—but before Sophia was even born I heard that you always get the child who’s the direct opposite of you. I said, How silly is that? Kids learn from the people they’re around the most.

Okay, to anybody else out there who thinks this isn’t going to happen to them? It’s going to happen to you.

Her Royal Girlness

Sophia is the girliest girl ever. She wants Princess everything. She would be happy with a continuous loop of Disney Princess movies on in the background. On her own she decided that dresses are by far the bestest thing in the world to wear. A week ago I took out a long-sleeved shirt and pants for her, because it was a very cold, very rainy day and I wanted her to keep warm. She responded by flinging herself on the ground and wailing, “But if I don’t wear a dress, how will anyone know I’m a girl?” This happened, honestly and truly. I was spurred to buy her some tights…which she loves and she wants to wear tights all the time and maybe she should start taking dance classes again so she can wear tights even more.

(Has to be dresses, by the way. The skirt sets Grandma has bought her so many of have pretty much been left untouched. The dresses though…those will be worn through before we send them on to Goodwill.)

The time I told her that there were special kinds of dresses she could wear to bed? I thought she might cry from happiness. She wears pajamas now only when there isn’t a nightgown to be had. And if the nights were any warmer she might skip the pajamas to keep her nightgown streak unbroken.

The Princess dresses I’ve bought her at Costco? She’d wear them all day every day if I’d let her. As it is, she comes home from school, slips into something not quite comfortable but definitely satiny and poofy, and goes about her business.

She’s also been quite firm about what she wants for Christmas: makeup.

Yes. Makeup.

Now, I am seriously confused about where she got that one, because it certainly wasn’t from me: I don’t wear makeup. If there’s any time of year when I would wear makeup, it’s a little lipstick in the wintertime, because my lips chap so fast. But I haven’t worn it much and certainly not recently. And she hasn’t gotten it from toy commercials or anything: she doesn’t see commercials. (Thank you, TiVo.)

I mentioned the makeup thing to the mom of one of Sophia’s best friends and she said, “Do you shop at Costco? They have this gigantic package of toy makeup for kids. Non-toxic, washes right off.” So maybe Sophia’s gotten this from one of her friends, but I think it’s far more likely that Sophia has just decided that it’s time, she’s 4, it’s time to wear lipstick (“Because I like lipstick”) and perhaps a touch of rouge.

(I talked it over with Darin. He’s certainly not big on makeup in general, but he’s said that getting her the box of play makeup would be fine.)

Last week, when I bought an In Style magazine, Sophia said she needed a magazine too. Eventually I discovered that what she wanted was a wedding magazine—the ad on the back of InStyle was for a wedding magazine…and Sophia wants to figure out what she’s going to wear for her wedding.

Today I bought her pink nail polish to complete her Princess outfit for tonight. On the way home, she asked me whether she’d marry her friend W____ from her preschool class or someone else. I said she had plenty of time to decide on that one and she didn’t need to rush into anything. After we got home, I put a coat of nail polish on her fingers. I told her to stay still until it dried…and damned if she didn’t sit still until I touched her fingernail and was sure it was dry.

After she finished with trick-or-treating tonight and I was helping her get out of her big yellow dress, she said excitedly, “Guess what? I can wear nail polish on my toes, too!”

I don’t know where she’s getting this stuff. I don’t know if this is a phase. I know, she’s 4, she’s playing, trying on various things. But still. Whoa. Definitely wasn’t expecting this persona. and what’s worse is I feel completely unprepared to deal with it. Well, I guess if I start finding out about these things when she’s 4, I might have a clue later on. I don’t even know how to put on makeup (I flash back to those horrible explanatory diagrams of needing to brush from the tip of your ear to the edge of your cheekbone near your nose in a giant swash in order to place the blush correctly, and I want to throw my hands in the air).

My biggest problem with this, of course, is that it’s not a phase I ever went through, or if I did, it was stamped out in a hurry. Makeup was not something I’d have ever asked my mother about. And at the Convent girls weren’t allowed to wear makeup at school (although there was a general rush to put it on once the school day was over). I missed some crucial window of time when I could get comfortable with the stuff. I guess I’m happy Sophia’s interested. I’m just wondering…isn’t it a little early?

However, there’s one thing I’m very clear on: if she ever comes home and says, “Math is hard,” I’m going medieval on her petite, well-dressed butt. That sort of girliness I will not tolerate.

I wonder if the same thing will happen with Simon. If so, Simon’s going to be a Republican evangelical smoker who watches football all day. I don’t know what I’ll do then, either.

Speaking of the kids (were we?), Sophia said the funniest thing today.

Darin stayed home today because he felt sick. Anyone who knows him knows how often that’s happened. So we’re all in various places in the house and Sophia told me she wanted something to eat. I said, “We’re going to have lunch with Daddy.”

She ran over to Darin and said, “Daddy, it’s the weekend!”

Because on weekends, you see, we have lunch with Daddy.

Darin explained to her about “sick days” and how he’d be going to work tomorrow (he hopes—now that he’s seen the house in full chaos mode during the day).

Today I dropped Sophia off at preschool and spent a little time talking to one of her teachers about how she’s doing, what she’s interested in, etc. Then I wandered around looking for Simon (who, every morning, gives me a look like, Yo, I get to stay here too, right?). Sophia came over to me and said:

Mom, can you leave? ‘Cause I need to play.

Ouch. Ouch.

This morning I came downstairs to find Darin making a pot of noodles for the kids for breakfast. Sophia was in the kitchen, watching.

                     DIANE
         You're going to have noodles for
         breakfast?
                     SOPHIA
             (with hands flung out for
              emphasis)
         It's called pasta.

I can see I’m in for a very tough lifetime.

Sophia’s teacher told me the funniest story.

Evidently some prospective parents were touring the preschool today, and the teacher wanted to demonstrate how they talk about parents. (Or something. This part I’m not clear on.) So she asked, “Who here misses their mommy?”

Sophia answered loudly and proudly: “I don’t!”

Not quite the answer anyone was expecting. So then the teacher asked the kids, “Who here loves their mommy?”

Sophia thought about this for a few seconds and then shouted, “I do!”

(I’m supposing that all the children said “I do!” as well.)

The teacher explained to the parents that Sophia is a very independent soul.

The teacher said to me that Sophia is definitely one of the most independent and self-confident children she’s ever met, and she’s going to miss her a whole bunch when we leave.