Disneyland!

We all survived our first family vacation together.  Even the plane trip was fun.  Isabel loved the airplane.  She likes looking at them when they fly over, and loved the aerospace museum, but I wasn't convinced she'd like dealing with the pressure in her ears.  She never even mentioned a thing about her ears.  She just kept smiling and talking.  Ryan and I brought a handful of toys and books she had never seen before to keep her occupied which did the trick on the way down to L.A. On the way back she was content to look through Sky Mall and the Southwest magazine.  She seriously turned pages the entire trip.

As do most kids, she fell in love with Disneyland, and liked Sleeping Beauty's castle in particular.  It changes colors during the nightly fireworks show (which was amazing), and she is still talking about it today.  She loved the daily parade as well, but talks about that much less.  We rode the hunny pots to see Winnie the Pooh & Friends a few times each day we were there. She still talks about those hunny pots.The first day she was afraid of the carousel, but got over that by the second day.  Now we have to ride the carousel at the mall.  The first day she was afraid of the Pinocchio ride (we probably didn't pick the best first rides for her), by the second day she "had to see Pinocchio."  She devised a plan for

when the ride got a little too scary for her -

She loved both The Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion and only covered her eyes during extreme darkness.  At the end of each ride she said "more."

Probably the best part of the entire trip was breakfast with the characters.  We stumbled upon this purely by accident.  We were both under the impression that to have breakfast with the characters you have to pay a pretty good price through one of the Disney hotels.  We just looked on the map for a restaurant that served breakfast which was different than the one we ate at the first morning.  Turns out the Plaza Inn is not only open for a buffet breakfast (Disneyland makes the best waffles I've ever tasted and great coffee as well), but you get to "eat" and visit with Minnie Mouse & Friends at the same time.  I say "eat" because there was so much visiting (they come right to your table) there was little time for actually eating. 

While most other kids were super excited to meeting folks such as Tigger, Eeyore, Chip and Dale, Captain Hook, Geppetto, Rafiki, Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and a fox or wolf I still have to figure out, Isabel was happy to have someone else to talk to.  I think at this point the only two she really knew were Tigger and Eeyore because she had already met them.  She had sooooo much to tell them, like "you have 2 eyes," or "I have a boo-boo."  Chip or Dale (not sure which at the moment) just fell in love with her and spent an ungodly amount of time at our table playing with her.  Seriously worth the not-really-inflated price of the buffet.

Of course no trip to Disneyland with a 2-year-old would be believable if there weren't at least a few noteworthy problems.  So, here they are - the first night she would.not. go to sleep.  She just wanted to stay up and either talk or bounce on the bed.  Exhausting.  The first day in the park she had a monster of a blow-out diaper.  Seriously, folks, we had to buy her new clothes at one of the Main Street shops because both her shirt and pants were ruined for the day.  The second day we had waited too long to change her diaper and I got pee on my new pants.  The last 2 days she woke up crying from her nap-in-the-stroller.  I guess all you have to do is dangle the chance to meet a character in front of her and she snaps out of it pretty quick.

She got so into the characters that if she saw any one of them she knew the name for, she would yell their name from any distance in hopes they would come over to her.  That included breakfast from just 2 or 3 tables away as well.  I guess on the last night (I think) she met Mickey Mouse again by yelling at him.  I was in a store waiting for her name to get embroidered on her mouse ears, so I missed the entire thing.  Apparently Ryan & Busy were hanging out in front of the store which is also a prime location for characters to stand for photo ops (and right by where they enter the park).  She saw Mickey come out from the back and immediately started yelling "Mickey....Hey Mickey..."  As a group of kids were running toward him to start a line, he put his hand up to stop them and motioned for her to come over.  She ran to him and gave him a giant hug, and they proceeded to "talk" for a few more minutes. 

I seriously can.not wait to go back.  It was expensive enough that it won't be soon, but we all had so much fun we can't not go back.