Alligators

Last week we told Gabe that we were going on an airplane. He was super excited. “We go on airplane? We eat cookies? We sit in seat? We get water?” Considering the fact that he hasn’t been on a plane since March, I was pretty impressed. Also, I’m glad that his expectations are so low...

I was kindof worried about Gabe on a six hour flight. He did 10 hours to London last year just fine, but he’s older and wigglier now. Pat took him to the store on Saturday and let him pick out a toy. He picked out this guy on a motorcycle and was super excited about it. He wanted to play with it when they got home. I told him that it was for the plane and he would have to wait. He was not happy. When he woke up from his nap he was a cranky mess because “I play my motorcycle guy!” and Mommy said no. We got in the car and he asked about it. We got on the plane...and he completely forgot about it. He didn’t ask once. He may have been distracted by the cookies... But on our Seattle to Fort Lauderdale flight Pat pulled it out and it was the only toy he played with for nearly six hours.

One of the problems with the age gap between our kids is that they’re so far apart that we’re almost raising two only children. They miss out on a lot of sibling things because it just doesn’t work. One of those things is sharing a bed on family vacation. It’s kindof a sibling rite of passage. I remember many a family vacation sharing a bed with Matt because that was just the way it needed to work. Well, we didn’t want to fight with a pack and play, so we decided that the two kids could share a bed. Bella was not happy. To be fair, she’s never had to share a bed before. Our other problem is that Gabe still sleeps in a crib.

We got to the hotel late Saturday night and I got Gabe ready for bed. I put a pillow between the bed and the nightstand and laid a few on the floor. It’s a good thing I did because no one noticed when he fell out of bed, including him. I just woke up two hours later and found him there.

Clearly he is not ready for a hotel bed, and he’s just started on the floor the last two nights. Bella is thrilled to have the bed to herself.

We got to Fort Lauderdale last night with basically enough time to get dinner and go to bed. Seeing as we had a very short night in Seattle the night before, no one minded much. In fact, everyone was so wiped out that I was the first one up at 9:30. Everyone else slept until 10:30. Needless to say, we missed breakfast.

We got some lunch and then went to the beach to play. Gabe was terrified of the water, but eventually I carried him in far enough that the waves hit his legs. He was still terrified, but he spent the rest of the day talking about how “I go in ocean with Mommy” amd how it was a lot of fun. It tooks us awhile to get Bella in the water too, but that’s because Pat told her that little fish would bite her toes.

After the beach, we decided to go on an airboat tour of the Everglades to find some alligators. That was pretty cool. Once again, Gabe was terrified, but he warned up to the boat pretty quickly and soon wanted it to keep going faster. We also saw some alligators.

Then they let us hold a baby alligator. How great is that???

And now I must go convince a little boy that he really does have to go to sleep even though he’s too tired to hold still long enough to sleep...