California Here We Come..

To be specific, Disneyland. We’re Coming For You

I’m aliiiiiive. Well we are getting there I should say. I return from Norovirus-land with a body and head that feel like they've been removed from a washer and dryer. Things are fuzzy and sore. The boys are already returning to normal rambunctious levels and I am able to keep congee and saltines down. Huzzah! Somehow, Lucas managed to escape this one. Bless his heart. Actually, seriously bless him because we needed one functioning adult in the household since we were not calling in any back ups. Lucas went April 2020 on us real quick. Lysol wipes were out, hand washing to happy birthday, he even busted out the 32 oz bottle of hand sanitizer and remained 10 feet from me at all times. I tried touching him once and he shrunk into a 7 year old boy at recess, shrieking and gawking at the sheer audacity. It made me giggle, it was worth it. 

Norovirus did us dirty. Jack was sadly our canary. Everything he experienced we met a few hours later. The kid is a champ.

We dodged a bullet with this one. I know a few folks who went on trips this past weekend and got nailed with a similar virus while away. At first I was disappointed our plans for the weekend had been blown up but then I saw how hard it would be to be away from home, sick, with kids and without a community to help. So we are thankful to have been home, to have been exposed and have the time to recover before we head out of town. Hudson and I are getting on a plane Wednesday to go to Disneyland! Life is weird, one day you’re in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, next you are mid-air headed to seventy degree weather to the best cast of characters around, we are looking at you Buzz Lightyear. Okay, but why are we going? There is always a story.

We began potty training Hudson a year ago. We read the potty training book by Jamie Glowacki who approaches the training with, “burn the boats” Cortez method. Meaning, cold turkey with the diapers. So we bought the potty, we set the date, and expectations were mediocre. Long story short, we got the kid halfway there by mid-February. Which was decently encouraging. We were stumped on how to move forward and luckily the ol’ “let’s procrastinate and see if the problem fixes itself” method ACTUALLY worked this time. But we super procrastinated, as in we waited 10 months. In our defense we were going to try Round II at the start of the year but the kid beat us to the punch. So how does Disneyland fit into this? 

Early last summer Hudson started getting into Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. One of the show’s songs popped up on an Amazon playlist and I blew his mind when he realized it was also a show. Later on in August we went camping with Lucas’ family out at Lake Chelan and Hudson was getting frustrated with the waterproof diapers. So in passing I told him, “Diapers are super annoying. We get it. You don’t have to use them, you know how to use the potty. You just need to want to use it all the time. When you do, you will stop wearing diapers and going places like the lake or beach will be even more fun. You can even go see Mickey Mouse’s Clubhouse and you won't have to worry about diapers.” He nodded but that was as far as the conversation went. If you have done potty training, you know fewer words are better and equal less pressure.

Needless to say, I barely remembered the conversation. But he did. Fast forward to mid-December he woke up with a diaper rash he decided would be his last. He started using the potty for all its usefulness and after three days of success came to me and said, “We go to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse now.” I negotiated back, “You want to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse?”. To which he doubled down, “No, we go to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse”. My jaw was on the floor. (The selective hearing and memory with this one is strong. Note logged for future negotiations.)

I explained Mickey doesn’t live in the weird house like the one on the show, he lives in California at a place called Disneyland which looks very different. I showed him pictures. Like A FOOL. The child was sold. Let me remind you this was amidst the “Great Delousing”, in fact we were only three weeks in and our new couch and rugs had just been delivered two days prior. We were not in the financial position to “do Disney”.  Lucas came home from work that day and I explained our predicament. Do we be parents of our word and do the less fiscally responsible thing? Or be humbugs and worse, parents whose word is hard to trust?

We landed on let’s pray. I know, it’s been a theme around here lately. Well God answered and not in the way I thought, he made it happen. He provided some extra remodeling work for Lucas and some family gave us a bit of cash at Christmas. So I booked the tickets, made the reservations and took a deep breath because if I’m being honest this trip is for me as much as it is for Hudson. I grew up twenty-five minutes south of Disneyland, so as much as it was a luxury it also sat familiar.  For folks who grew up in the Puget Sound area, it’s the equivalent of going to Wild Waves. I understand Wild Waves and Disneyland may fall differently on the scale, but it was the nearest amusement park in proximity. We had other parks, but Disneyland was the place we were first introduced to with our families. And now, even though we come from afar, I get to share the right of passage with Hudson.

Baby me, in August 2008.

The last time I went was in 2008, fifteen years ago when I was eighteen years old. Prior to that, I was an annual pass holder, it was a place to hang with friends after school or for windows on the weekend. It was a place I would go to rally and regain hope during and after my parents divorce. But my favorite Disneyland memory actually comes from my Winter Formal junior year. Our dance was held at the ESPN Zone at Downtown Disney. I went with a big group of friends and my date was a sweet friend, purely platonic which made the night fun. Once we arrived at the venue, I realized how much I really didn’t want to be there. Things at home were especially rough during this season. I was living with my dad and his sponsor in their apartment. My mom and I were going through a rough patch and hadn’t spoken for a few months. There were heavy, hard new responsibilities in my life that I didn’t know how to handle or who to seek guidance from. Simply said, my childhood had passed and I was mourning. 

We were barely at the dance ten minutes before Ryan, my date, jumped in front of me and yelled “Did you bring your wallet? Do you have your pass?!” I did. So we played hooky and ran as fast as we could down Downtown Disney to the Disneyland gates. They almost didn’t let us in because our attire resembled characters which isn’t allowed in the park. We went on as many rides as we could pack in, Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion, etc. We ate hot dogs and laughed nervously because we weren’t sure if we would get in trouble. To this day that kid doesn’t know how much I needed that night, to feel like a kid again for a minute. To remember there are still good days among the hard, hope is never out of hand and good friends always show up when you least expect it. 

That is Disneyland in a nutshell. It is a place to return to innocence and feel like a kid again. It’s a place to feel joy and hope from the stories and songs we love. Best of all, it’s a place we get to share with family and friends and create memories we rest on later in life. Now I should admit as soon as I thought Disneyland was even a possibility, I reached out to an old friend who still lives down in the area. We haven’t seen one another in over 15 years but we got reconnected on IG when she was pregnant with her first kiddo a few years back. It feels full circle and so beautiful we finally get to see one another with our two bigs at Disneyland. My friend+mom heart is about to explode.

Disneyland, here we come. 

My mom and I in the Matterhorn line, in 2008.