Are you sick of my vacation posts yet? Too bad! I promise, this should be the last one. I think.
We found this awesome intertube type thing, appropriately named Big Bertha, at our rental house, so we Brian drug it down to the beach on our last day to see if the kids would be interested in a ride. They were interested, and they LOVED it.
Video (if you listen closely, you can hear their sweet giggles over the sound of the waves and wind):
Liam would laugh hysterically every time a wave hit, then frantically sign "more" when there was a lull in waves.
Midweek, we decided to change up our evening a bit and head to Funland, which was in Sea Isle City, the next town over from Avalon. We had gone to the same place our very first year vacationing together, but it didn't really end well; Jake was about 18 months old and there was nothing fun to him about Funland at that time. Photographic evidence of his hatred of Funland, circa August 2009:
side note-if you didn't know any better, wouldn't you assume that was Liam??
I'm happy to say that the amusement park was much better received this time around.
his first roller coaster!
Liam enjoyed watching everyone on the rides for a little while, then wanted to get out of the stroller and walk around. No problem, stretch your legs! All was well until the poor kid then tried to stand in line with the big kids and walk onto the same rides. Poor Liam spent a significant amount of time on vacation trying to keep up with the big kids, and this was just salt in the wound for him!
Funland should be renamed "Lameland". where are my rides?
We found one ride he could go on, this super fun train that went around in a circle:
I could almost hear his thoughts of, "seriously? Jake goes on a caterpillar shaped roller coaster and I get stuck on this lame train? What a ripoff." Next year, my little man.
Here's a pretty funny video of Jake on the bumper cars; either he just couldn't understand how to properly turn the wheel, or his car was broken, because he never stopped spinning in circles the entire time. He got off, looked a little woozy and said he was dizzy. oops.
We have been grooming these boys to be BFF's since they were in the womb; though to be honest, it hasn't taken that much grooming on our part at all, they've just kind of fallen into those roles. It's always fun to see their big reunions, and even if it's been awhile, they seem to pick right back up where they left off.
This was the first year that they were going to be roommates; each set of parents had been prepping them for this for weeks leading up to vacation. We had talked to Jake about how important it was that they actually went to sleep so that they had enough energy to play at the beach every day, how important it was to be quiet in the middle of the night if he woke up, etc... We didn't have high expectations, at least for the first few nights. Of course, as I mentioned in my last post, the poor kid had strep throat, so my expectations for at least the first few nights were lowered even more.
So, night 1 rolls around and they go into their room around 8:30pm, and our entertainment for the evening quickly became listening to the monitor. There were a lot of funny exchanges between them, but this one was by far the best: Background: Jake often gets really hot at night and ends up taking his PJ's off to sleep. This is what happened this first night at the beach house.
Ben: Jake, why do you sleep without your PJ's on?
Jake: Because I get hot.
Ben: Oh. *a few seconds of silence*
Jake: Hey, Ben...you could take your clothes off, too.
Ben: No, I don't think so. *a few seconds of silence*
Jake: Well, if you do, we would be the Naked Brothers.
I love how he threw it out there, like it was some elite group that already existed or something.
Fast forward to a little while later: Melissa and I are in the kitchen, stuffing our faces full of chocolate chip cookies. Ben creeps up the stairs and catches us, literally with our hand in the cookie jar. He does the obvious and tries to bargain for a cookie, but Melissa sends him back to bed. We turn up the monitor in time to hear him say, "Jake, Jake! They're eating cookies up there without us!"
Mwuwuhahaha....yes, that's right, kids. Sometimes mommies and daddies save the BEST snacks for when all of the kids are in bed!
We ended up having to separate them the next night because they were talking (well, mostly Jake talking to Ben!), but they wanted to try again the following night and they were fine. They were roomies the rest of the trip!
Here's a video of the night they decided to morph into the long-lost members of One Direction. I love their sweet moves and Liam waddling around the place, doing his own thing, including terrorizing the innocent remote control:
Not just for the parents, but apparently for the kids, too!
Obviously, part of the exhaustion was due to being in the sun and running around like wild maniacs all day...but part of it was due to illness. Yes, you read right...illness. Because that's just what this family does! We plan exciting things, then we all get sick either just before or during said exciting thing. Lets review the illnesses of the week:
Emmy: cold/sinus problems the week leading up to vacation, fortunately, I was better by the time we left.
Melissa: cold/throat problems a few days before leaving, then had no voice whatsoever on Saturday.
Jake: Strep Throat. The first time ever that the poor kid has had strep, and of course it's just in time for vacation. Fortunately, he did come down with it prior to us leaving, so we started him on antibiotics on Thursday, and he was doing much better by the end of the day on Sunday.
Liam: Ear Infection and major teething. First ear infection since he had his tubes put in, go figure! He woke up with it on Saturday, so we had to call the doctor in Pittsburgh, who had to call the drops into a pharmacy in NJ. That cleared up within a few days. He has been teething for what seems like an eternity at this point, but when vacation first started I saw 5 brand new white buds in his mouth, and over the week of our trip 3 of those totally cut through.
Ben: Started running a fever at the beginning of the week, had a cough and runny nose. His lasted the entire time we were there.
Brian: Started feeling sick around Wednesday of our trip, was running a fever, had chills, body aches, cough, runny nose, etc... super fun times. He felt a bit better by the end of the week, but is actually back to feeling kinda blah now.
So if you're keeping track, there were 8 of us on this vacation, SIX of the eight were man down at some point. Brutal. Dennis came out unscathed, although even baby Parker ran a fever once we were all at home.
Next year, I'm putting everyone in a quarantine bubble for a few weeks leading up to our trip.
We spent a looooot of time on the beach during the day, so it was always nice to unwind at night with a stroll, or ice cream...or both.
Your heart is melting, right?
During our walk on our very first night there, we stopped to admire the fire station just down the street:
Imagine our surprise when all of a sudden, the doors opened up and a firefighter came out and asked if we would like to come inside and sit in a truck!
The kids loved going down to the beach one evening and walking along the water...but Liam didn't get the memo that we weren't actually going to go IN the water. We took a very drenched little boy back home with us that night.
It's nice that every year Brian's parents are able to come down and visit us for a day or two while we're on vacation; they love seeing the boys on the beach, we love seeing them and having 2 other adults around to help with the child wrangling--it's a win-win for everyone.
Nana & Baby Parker!
They spent one day at the beach with us, then came back down to take Jake fishing.
It was Liam's first time seeing the ocean, and while he's been swimming before, I wasn't sure how he'd react to a much larger expanse of water. Turns out, I had nothing to worry about; he literally crawled right into the ocean. I'm pretty sure he would have kept going had I let him.
Video:
He looks worried here, but I often look worried when I realize I don't know what could be lurking underneath me in the ocean, too.
I'd had him in training for the past few months, trying to break his little habit of ingesting fistfuls of sand. Ick. I thought if I exposed him to our sand table at home enough, the allure of chowing down on sand would wear off...yeah, not so much. This was New Jersey sand, time to sample!! Fortunately, he did stop eating it by the 2nd day. Which is good, because it literally made me gag to watch him, I don't know how he enjoyed it.
It's a good thing he got over his sand craving and got to work, there was lots of digging to be done throughout the week!
Ben and Jake had a blast together, jumping in the holes they dug, and running into the water:
