Now that I am way behind on posting about the twists and turns of my incredibly exciting life, it is probably time for me to suck it up and get you all caught up over the next couple days, huh?
Our Disneyland vacation was a total blast, although it seems insane that an amusement park can so skillfully suck every last dollar out of the pockets of unassuming guests and we just stand there smiling and forking out the dough :) Ha! I am such a sucker. Anyway, here are a couple memorable moments of our trip:
On our first visit to Mickey's House in Toontown, Pluto came out of the City Hall, walked right up to Zbot, patted his blue hair, then grabbed his hand, and walked around Toontown with Z in tow. A very cool moment, indeed! We also did this Magic Morning thing where we got to go into the park an hour before it opened. The down side was that we had to get up by 5:30 am after getting back to the hotel only hours earlier, in order to get there in time. Ugh... but I am so glad we did it as we got to go about 8 rides in a row and the kids thought it was so awesome to just be able to walk up and get on a ride, especially after spending much of the first day waiting and waiting. I also highly recommend seeing The World of Color at the California Adventure Park. That was one of the coolest water and projection displays I have ever seen and totally worth keeping the kids awake til 10pm to see!! All in all, it was really quite a perfect family vacation and now I can't wait to take the kids to Disney World!!
Now let's talk a little bit about bad parenting. It seems to me that every time I go somewhere family oriented, I seem to notice how unequipped a lot of parents are and it really frustrates me. I am all for a law that requires someone to pass a test and receive a license before procreating. Seriously, it makes me crazy because I know I am not a perfect parent, but some people shouldn't even have a license to walk around in public, much less the privileged of breeding! Here are a few examples of what I am talking about, be mindful that these are extreme cases but are all things I have encountered within the last month...
We flew back home on my birthday and had to endure the most obnoxious lady in the seats in front of us. She was flying back to Denver with her 2 small children (they were 2 and 3 years old and only 10 months apart, as she made a point of telling the whole plane). It started with the take off when her little girl, the three year old who had just finished potty training, had to pee really bad and couldn't hold it. So the mom gets up with the girl and the flight attendants let her know it isn't safe to be standing up and moving around on the plane in the middle of take off. So the mom just freaks on them and starts screaming about how it will be all their fault if her kid pees all over the seat, and how they will have a huge mess to clean up. Needless to say, her reaction just freaks out the little girl even more and she is sitting there screaming about having an accident, while her mom is busy berating the flight attendants... Eventually one of the flight attendants came over and told the mom that, although they cannot advise her to get up and take her kid to pee, they really can't stop her from doing it... So she grabs her daughter (still crying) and runs to the back of the plane to the bathroom and doesn't even tell her 2 year old little boy what is happening or where she is going. The whole time she was in the bathroom with her daughter, her son was freaking out because he was probably scared to death that he was left alone on the plane without a clue as to where his mom and sister had gone to.
That whole situation was really frustrating to me for a couple reasons. First, as a mom, isn't it your responsibility to make sure your recently potty trained child uses the bathroom (or at least tries) before getting on a plane? Or wouldn't you at least put your kid in a pull-up or diaper for the flight since it is a situation where your child may not be able to get up and pee at a moments notice and may also be a place where a kid isn't comfortable using the potty? Not to mention that I find it so irresponsible to leave a 2 year old unattended and not even give them a clue as to where you are going and if you are coming back. I would love to say that the flight was fine after that, but that mom just made things worse and worse. She spent the remainder of the 2 hour flight yelling at her kids and telling them the police were going to come arrest them if they didn't leave their seat belts on, and telling them she just wanted them to shut up and take naps and didn't want to hear from them until the plane landed. It was so hard to listen to, especially since her kids were not misbehaving or being disruptive at all. I just held onto my sleeping Stori and kept kissing her little forehead. The first thing I said to Steve when I got off the plane was that I will NEVER treat my children like that.
Continuing on the subject of butt-head parents, I thought it might be appropriate to mention another encounter I had, this one at Target. I do a lot of shopping at the Super Target down the street from our house because it is convenient as I can get everything from groceries to clothes and books for the kids in one place... and I feel much less ghetto shopping there than at Super Walmart. So I was shopping in the Easter section with Stori and a mom with 2 kids came by and the 2 kids started pointing to Stori's hearing aids and asking their mom what they were and why she had them... And the mom's only response to their inquiry was- "We don't point at retarded kids". What an ignorant bitch! I didn't even stop to think about what to say, I just turned to her and said as calmly as possible "it makes me really sad that you are going to raise 2 children to be as ignorant as you are". And then I got the hell out of there. It was almost too much for me to take and it took everything I had to keep it together and not burst into tears. I am sure I could have yelled at the lady and explained Stori's hearing loss and how it has NOTHING to do with her mental capacity, not to mention the fact that there is no situation where the use of the word "retard" should really be relevant, aside from stand up comedy maybe. I mean there are people all over the world with different abilities and to lump them into a category of being "retarded" is such an injustice. The world should be more focused on helping people reach their full potential, no matter what it may be, instead of wasting so much energy putting others down and trying find a label that fits every person they encounter. Such a waste. Anyway, I was pretty pissed about the whole situation and what hurt me the most was that these 2 kids were just asking an honest question and instead of an explanation from the adult in their lives with the most influence, they were just taught it is better/easier to label a person then learn about a person. This folks, is one of the many things that is wrong with this world.
Just to add a little more fuel to the fire, on the way out of Target that day, I saw a lady taking her baby (maybe 6 mos. old) out of the car... and instead of a carseat, the baby was buckled into a bouncer, which was sitting in a Sterilite bin, which was seat belted into the backseat of the car. How on earth did she think that was an acceptable safety restraint for her child??? I mean you can get a free carseat from the hospital if you can't afford to buy one yourself. By that point in my trip I had to get out of that place. I have always said that I don't like people, in general. But this shopping trip has put a new meaning behind that statement for me.
And thus concludes my recent adventures with terribly horrible crap-tastic parents. More tomorrow on things in life that I actually enjoy... Like my kids or something :)
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