Me walking back to our hotel room.
Back at POR in our Hotel room Eeoyre plays
Lego quietly. Jedi wakes up, wants some lunch (he eats more than his 8 grapes) and plays Lego too. Only not so quietly. DH naps, Cindy cuddles with DH and watches the Disney channel while I referee the boys. I can hear Nanny and Poppa snoring so I shut our adjoining doors.
After what I deem to be the appropriate amount of rest time we head back out to Mk for our 4:20 ADR's at the Crystal Palace. We were late. Jedi had another meltdown. This one was because he wanted to spend more time playing with his new Lego. I thought I could get out of this battle before it escalated. I suggested he take some pieces with him. DH and Eeoyre look at me sharply.
"Mommy, you know we aren't allowed to take our toys with us because they could get lost." Eeoyre says.
"I wish you would get lost" Jedi snaps in Eeoyres direction.
"Now boys, no one in the family is to get lost. Some time apart can be a good thing but in this family we do not tell our brother to get lost. Mommy would be very sad if I lost any of you."
Sigh, My eyes meet with DH and I sent out a silent SOS to him. He turns and goes to the bathroom. Guess I'm not getting any backup with this one.
"But mommy the rule is that we don't take the lego out of this room. Remember. You made the rule and now you are trying to change it."
(Big sigh by me here)
"Honey, can't you see I'm just trying to get your brother out of here without another meltdown?"
It was no use though because Jedi wanted to take ALL of the Lego with him. He was not responding to logic or reason. If all of the Lego couldn't come than he wasn't going.
Okay here comes the part where Dh stepped up to the plate. Since there was no use talking to Jedi anymore. He had gone beyond reason. DH emerged from the bathroom and scooped up Jedi knight in one full sweeping motion tossed him in the stroller and took off for the bus stop in a run so Jedi couldn't escape. The rest of us looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and followed behind quickly and silently. Except Nanny. Her panting was pretty loud.
We caught up to DH (except Nanny) and since I was whinning about carrying the heavy back pack again, DH took both strollers. Take a good look at them because this is the last picture I have of them intact and working.
Jedi had calmed down by the time we got to the bus stop. We just missed a MK bus. So we had 15 minutes to kill while we waited. You'd think after witnessing your younger sibling's earlier antics that you would realize the wise choice would be to stay away from him. Give him some space.
Eeoyre and Cindy didn't get that memo. They reminded me of the Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp. They pushed all Jedi's buttons, and pulled all of his strings. By the time the bus came I had separated the kids and sat them on benches as far apart as possible from each other.
The bus was fairly busy for a 4pm travelling into the parks. I didn't get a seat. I was holding the backpack (once again) and I had Cindy's stroller. Now I'm not all that tall and I find it hard to hold on to the ceiling rail. I can reach the leather hoops but it is a stretch for me.
A little girl was swinging her legs and kept kicking my stroller wheel. At first I didn't really notice but it got harder and harder to hold on to the stroller. I didn't want it to fall on someone's foot and really she shouldn't be kicking something belonging to someone else anyway.
So I spoke up.
"Would you mind not kicking my stroller please".
Her father snapped to attention. He had been dealing with another of his children having a meltdown because she couldn't see out of the windows.
He asked me what I had said to his older child in quite an abrupt tone.
"I was just asking your daughter to stop from kicking my stroller as it makes it difficult for me to hold on to it".
He suggested I move the stroller.
I swallowed my suggestion that he should be standing and I should be sitting.
Instead as the air conditioning was on in the bus and I was feeling quite chilly. I let myself sneeze many times in his direction. I ignored the Kleenex in my pocket and just let myself relax into the sneezing. Eventually strangers offered up some of their Kleenex. One passenger near me kept giggling and I suspect she had overheard and knew I was playing into my sneeze. Of course she was sitting on the opposite side of the bus so she was safe from spray.
Anyhow we finally made it to the magic kingdom.
It wasn't raining while we were at the bus but it started again while we were waiting in line at the CP. The winds were very strong and they let people wait inside.
Before we were allowed inside Jedi tried to replay a scene from our last trip. He climbed into my arms all cuddly (hard to believe he was that monster in the hotel room) and pretended to fall asleep. Naturally this lead to his siblings pretending to fall asleep on me as well. We captured the moment with this snapshot. Jedi seemed to be satisfied once the pictures were taken. He woke up quickly after that.
Apparently Eeoyre is not falling for it either.
Dinner went pretty smoothly for the Diamond family anyway. There were only a few minor food battles. Jedi didn't like the "green thingies" that were on the fruit salad so he kept picking them off and wiping them on the table cloth. Cindy ate her weight in pizza and DH was trying to make her eat plain white rice. He stopped once I reminded him the pizza's had a whole-wheat crust. Eeoyre took a long time deciding what food to pick out. He knew he had already had his chicken nuggets for the day.
Did I ever tell you about the vacation where neither Dh or I clued into the fact that Eeoyre had chicken nuggets, fries and chocolate milk everyday and often twice for a week? Poor Eeoyre got sick the last few times he had that meal before DH and I put two and two together. So even Eeoyre doesn't want to eat it each meal anymore. He knows he has to have some variety. Notice I said "some" because most people's idea of variety are not Eeoyres. He likes things the same and constant.
Anyhow after about 20 minutes I convince Eeoyre to have some of the roast turkey. I go through the whole spele with the CM cutting up the turkey.
"My son would like a piece of turkey but he is quite a picky eater. Is it possible to use a fresh knife on his piece? "
"Is it possible to put that piece on my plate here as your other knife touched it and therefore he will not. The next slice would be just perfect for him"
"I'm so sorry to bother you but it seems that there is some skin that made it's way onto this place. Here, I'll take that piece too and if you would be so kind to cut another piece without any skin on it that would be great."
Amazingly, the CM did not spit on the turkey as she passed it to me. I also managed to talk Eeoyre into a bun, and some plain white rice. We were in luck a fresh plate was bought out and I believe there were some grapes on his plate too. He snarled when I put them on his plate.
We ended seated at the same table as last year. I guess they only have so many tables for 7 people. It was decorated with Mickey heads for Jedi's birthday. I had taken so long with Eeoyre that Poppa had gotten bored and started re-arranging the Mickey heads with Jedi.
The kids did great when the characters came around. There was hugging and dancing and laughing. The pooh characters are a favorite of my kids. I've been told by all three of them that we must go back to the Crystal Palace the next time we go to Disney. They all loved it that much.
This was the first buffet meal that we let the kids go up alone (ie without and adult but they had to have a sibling with them). They loved the freedom in it. Poppa was going to get another bun and Cindy and Jedi jumped up so quickly to get it for him that they were back before he even sat down again.
Here's Nanny and Poppa at the table.
Now because there were four adults, even though we said the kids could go by themselves to the buffet there was always one of us there when the kids were going. Of course we were watching them but we pretended we weren't. In fact, Poppa was just pretending to want another bun as an excuse to be the adult supervising at the buffet so when Cindy and Jedi took off so fast he was left scratching his neck and wondering how he was going to get out of this one. I think after that Dh said he had to go to the bathroom.
Inside the Crystal palace it still seemed warm and sunny but while we were eating Tropical Storm Faye was huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down. We weren't in any big hurry to get going. I was hoping that the plastic covers had stayed in place on the strollers.
Finally when we had seen all the characters and the kids had eaten all the build your own ice cream sundaes they could handle we donned our Rain ponchos and headed back into the MK.
Up next we brace the storm, stitch, stroller glitches and a meltdown from someone outside of our family! Click here
http://www.disboards.com/showpost.php?p=28484767&postcount=332
It also looks like you had a pretty empty park
That must have made you feel good after your bad start to the day
I agree with the poster who said good for your son for being himself. My dd8 has a poster in her classroom that is talking about respect and self esteem and it says something like be confident enough to like the person you really are. I think I've butchered it but you get the drift of what is says. Glad the rain was on and off for you. Can't wait for more.
JK, actually...I've been kind of stuck, having a hard time writing the next part, but I think I'll try to get it done this weekend. There's some sad stuff and it's hard to write about, but important to the story. 
I've just started reading 
QUOTE]
I have no clue how to tell if there are lurkers...Diamond dropped in out of the sky, and the rest of my readers who have commented are all folks I know from an old countdown thread -- we all went to WDW May 2007 -- we still keep up with each other's lives and future Disney trips. Isn't it great how you can meet the coolest people from all over the world on the net? 
One of them lives near Anaheim, and we'll be meeting up with him, his family, and some other Disney freak friends when we go to DL in December 
iamond dropped in out of the sky,
I sigh a breath of relief and go back to being terrified imagining the disappearance of my other two.
Not so much a few minutes ago.
Off they go. The rest of us go back to the Hotel. DH walks with Eeoyre and I carry the backpack and push the still sleeping jedi. To top it all off I think I'm getting a blister and my nose is starting to run. I don't know if it is this dampness or a cold or both 
but I'm not having any fun on the way home.
Although in your shoes I may have thrown a soda in my hubby's face if he pulled a stunt like that. Eats by himself, for goodness sake...
I know you'll miss your kids like CRAZY on your solo trip, but just try and remember moments like this one, and it'll make it just a bit easier to be on an adult trip without them.
...imagine how many there will be for 9 days of disney at christmas... yeah. 
I doubt if I would get any meltdowns as the plans would be all geared to their desires (okay a little of mommys too). But then my trip reports wouldn't be quite as funny.
