Let Me Tell You a Storyland...

This past weekend the family took the Live Free or Die state by storm. (Did you have to click on the link to find out which state that is? Shame on you!) After swim class on Saturday, we loaded the munchkins in the van and started driving. We timed it perfectly for Pie's nap--we'd hit the road just as it was time for her to drift off. And it worked! We didn't count on her waking up after 45 minutes, making her one overtired cranky toddler. But I'm getting ahead of myself. At this point, she was a charming delightful child who decides there's too much going on to nap. Both kids are amazing on car rides. Pie snoozes and Doodles just looks out the window daydreaming, occasionally asking for snacks or a particular song. I had my iPod, and was playing my "Just for Fun" playlist, which is not Adam's favorite playlist. Doodles, though, liked it. "Who's singing this song?" he'd ask when he liked a particular song. And then Adam would just cringe when the little voice from the back seat called out, "Can you play Spice Girls again?"

After three hours, we arrived at Storyland. Most of our friends had made their virgin treks to Storyland the year before, and I had heard dreamy children raving about the place. I was expecting something worthy of a gothic horror novel or, at the very least, a Simpsons episode. But I was surprisingly wrong. It was bright and cheery and generally a really fun place.

I was a little concerned because not even a week ago, I had taken Doodles to the zoo, and there he wanted to ride the Merry Go Round. We were the only ones on it, which was a good thing, because after thirty seconds of it, Doodles decided he didn't like Merry Go Rounds and he wanted off. The operator obliged. Of course, we had already planned our trip and I didn't think it was worth canceling over one aborted Merry Go Round ride.

Turns out I had nothing to fear. Doodles found the pirate play area right away and Pie does not have her brother's aversion to Merry Go Rounds. We stayed at the park for about two hours (enough for three trips for Pie on the carousel) and then headed to dinner at Flatbread Company (Mmmmmmmmmmm! And it turns out there's one not too far from us locally.) Despite the wired, overtired children, dinner managed to be a qualified success, and we got out of there before Pie hurled my cell phone into the open fire pit oven.

Things quickly went downhill. Starting at 7 p.m., Pie screamed. Not a little. Not mildly. Top of her lungs, get me the hell out of here, what are you doing to me screaming. Thank goodness we were in one of the kid friendliest hotels I've ever seen. You could walk down the halls and hear screams echoing from each room: high-pitched infant wails, sirening toddler tantrums, whining preschool fits. It was a beautiful thing. I tried Ming Ming, I tried sleeping with her, I tried patting her back, I tried ignoring her. Finally, two hours--yes TWO HOURS OF SCREAMING--later, Adam picked her up, and took her out of the hotel. The minute they stepped outside, Pie started pointing to the hotel, screaming, "Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!" but Adam wasn't falling for it and he put her in the car where exactly 19.3 seconds into the ride, she passed out.

Meanwhile, Doodles is trying with all his might to fall asleep in his queen-sized bed. He keeps worrying about Pie ("Mommy, Pie is crying! Mommy, put Pie next to me. Mommy, why don't you move Pie's crib closer to my bed?") and it's pretty noisy in the room. Finally, by 9:30, both children are asleep in their respective beds, and I, in my exhausted glory, go to sleep myself.

And I sleep well. Until about 1 a.m. When I hear a thump. And a cry. "Doodles!" I say, getting up in the dark. "Doodles, where are you?" I'm hunting around on the floor next to the bed, but I can't find him. He's wailing, "Mommmy! Mommy!"

"Doodles, where are you?" I go to the other side of the bed, trying to feel around on the floor. "Adam," I hiss, "turn on the bathroom light. Doodles, where are you?"

"Mommy, I'm stuck!" The light goes on, and I don't see Doodles anywhere. I get down on my hands and knees. There, lying underneath his bed, is Doodles, properly trapped.

"Oh, baby!" I whisper, unable to control a little laugh. "How in the world did you get there?" I reach under and pull him out and make a mental note that he's definitely not ready to have the bed rails removed at home.

The next morning we head back to Storyland for more fun. The train around the park. The flying shoe ride (on which Pie, three seconds in, yelled, "All done! All done!"). The Loopy Lab Show. The antique cars. The ball room. Doodles managed to eat pizza at three of four meals.

At about 12:30, things began to head downhill. Pie refused to sit in the stroller. Pie refused to let anyone other than herself push the stroller. Pie became furious if you tried to prevent the stroller from hitting other people. By 1 p.m., Pie was angry and she made sure the world knew it. I got ice cream for everyone, including a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles for me and a vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles for Pie. Notice that Pie and I had the same thing. Notice that Pie REFUSES to eat her own ice cream, but will only eat mine. Notice that Pie WAILS if I try to eat her ice cream instead of my own. Notice that the people around us are laughing as Pie pushes the ice cream away, no, takes it back! No, pushes it away! No, takes the cone and FLINGS it to the ground and then loses that last shred of rationality she may have had when we throw out the ice cream that was facedown on the ground. We carry her out over our shoulder, with her wailing the entire way. Needless to say, she opted out of her nap that day.

I'm going to break out of my sarcastic shell here and actually write about something seriously. You know, I debated whether to tell this part of the story or not. It's odd, because I generally think I put on a shiny happy face here. Most of my life I don't blog about. The serious stuff, the private stuff, the stressful stuff remains separate from this. But here it goes: We got back to the hotel and after it was clear that Pie wasn't going to nap, we put a movie on for the two to watch (the hotel had a free DVD movie library) and I headed out to do a little shopping (the hotel was on the grounds of an outlet mall). I came back and everyone was restless, so we decided to head to the pool. There was an outdoor heated pool and jacuzzi and the kids were psyched for a swim. We got in, swam for a bit, but the weather was a little cloudy and no one was that into it. We decided to bail for more fun pastures. "Doodles, do you want to keep swimming or go ride a train?" I asked him, knowing full well what the answer to that would be.

The pool was about three feet deep and it had a wall around the inside of the pool that was probably about a foot and a half deep. Doodles was walking out along the wall. It all gets fuzzy here, but I though he was walking out with Adam and Adam thought he was walking out with me. I get out of the pool, turn around, and there's Doodles bobbing in the water. I scream his name, Adam dives for him (Pie is already out and in her towel) and luckily there's a guy in the jacuzzi who is able to quickly reach Doodles and pull him out.

Doodles was shaky, but breathing and alert, but obviously terrified. "I got my head under water! I couldn't breathe!" But what seemed to shake him the most was, "Mommy and Daddy weren't there! Someone else got me!" Oh, my, the guilt doesn't go away on that one! It was the most terrifying moment of my life and immediately brought on flashbacks to when I was six and a neighbor boy drowned in a pool at which my family was swimming. He didn't make it; I have to keep reminding myself that Doodles is fine. But I can't get that image out of my head of him in the water and it's nightmare-inducing horrifying.

He's mentioned it a few times since then, but he says he still wants to go to swimming class on Saturday, which is a good sign (not that we'd let him skip it--we don't want his fears to fester). And he immediately perked up when I asked him if he still wanted to go on a train ride. But still, it's a hard thing for a mom to shake. Don't think I ever will.

Okay, now that that's off my chest, let me go back to my normal frivolous blogging.

That afternoon we took the 55-minute ride on the Conway Scenic Railroad. Doodles was mesmerized. Pie was kept mildly appeased with Tootsie Roll bribes. Dinner was a mild affair--Doodles's French fries were round, and therefore inedible, but he managed with another dinner of pizza and the evening was saved. And Pie was so exhausted that she fell asleep the instant we put her down. No tears!

The next day we decided to stop off and meet my MIL at the Portsmouth Children's Museum, which was a huge hit with the kids, and oddly enough, despite it being about an hour away from home, we ran into not one but two friends while we were there. Doodles was in heaven, running around the place with his buddies. Lunch at the Friendly Toast, and then back home where we returned to life as usual. You know, screaming, whining, refusing to eat. But all in the comfort of our own home.