To Afraid or Not to Afraid?

You can fly, you can fly, you can fly!

Yesterday, throwing all caution to the wind and exercising poor fiduciary reasoning, my wife and I took our children to Disneyland.  My friend from Reno was in town with his wife and two youngest children, and we made a nice day out of it.

There were the usual fun-filled and funny moments, like when we team-passed my youngest son, Xavi, into the line.  Some nice strangers helped toss him across so that he could enjoy riding Dumbo.

That’s a kid who has never met a stranger.

Yeah, it's THAT magical!

We also got to partake of the lovely Paradise Pier pool area (floor 3), complete with a decent-sized water slide and kid-friendly hot tub.  By which I mean kids jumped in and out of the hot tub while turning on and off the jets while most everyone else ignored, laughed, or were silently annoyed.

For the record, I choose to believe that Disney fills their pools constantly with clean, artesian well water.  I refuse to consider the prospect of any urine being in these pools despite the number of children, or the provided swimming diapers (which we used).

Xavi seemed to have the most fun.  Porter forgot his goggles, and Tristan doesn’t like getting his head under the water (which happened when he took his first and only ride on the water slide).  My little 18-month-old sat on the edge of the hot tub next to me, lightly splashing his little toes against the warm water right until he became overly curious and tumbled face first into the frothing water.

Fishing him out was easier than finding his lost pacifier.

I thought he would cry and be done with the hot tub, wanting only the comfort of his reasonably dry mother.  Instead, he took it like a champ and demanded to stay in the tub standing next to me . . . when he wasn’t face-diving back into the water whenever he lost his balance.

Rock and Roll all night, and part of every day!

But as we rode home, our two oldest knocked off first.  It was a good hour past their bedtime, and running, skipping, jumping, climbing, riding and swimming had, strangely, taken it out of them.  They slept slumped over while shorts from Disney Pixar played in the backseat of our minivan.

Meanwhile, defying all logic, and a good two hours past his bed time, Xavi kept rocking the night, staying wide awake almost all the way home.  We kept peering back at him to see if he’d finally fallen asleep, only to witness as he gave us fist bumps and Rock-On Devil Horns.

Almost.

About five minutes from the house, he finally slumped over and started snoring.