Skamarakas Family - May 2006

Cast of Characters - Mom Anna (41), and DDs Brighid (14); Eilis (5) and Granuaile (1)

Day 3 - Friday, May 26th

The Streak Is Alive!

On each of my last three trips to Disney, someone has gotten sick. I was tempted to keep all three of my kids in a plastic bubble in the weeks before this trip to keep them from getting ill, but the thought of cleaning the fingerprints off of the plastic convinced me to take my chances with them in the real, germ filled world.

At exactly 12:03 AM, 3 minutes after the emergency walk in clinic has closed for the night, Eilis wakes up crying with ear pain. She has just done 20 days on antibiotics for recurring ear infections, and I fear this is what it might be. I phone the front desk and ask if there is another clinic anywhere else where I might be able to take her to get a prescription, and they tell me no, but they will be happy to phone paramedics for me. Back in November when I was here, Gracie was having trouble breathing, so I did have them call paramedics, and they were both really cute and very nice, but my thought is that sending a paramedic for an ear infection, no matter how cute he might be, was overkill.

I get up, get dressed, and plan on going to the ER with her, when it occurs to me that I might be able to phone home and ask our pediatrician what to do. I call ahead back to the front desk and ask for the phone number for a close pharmacy so that if our ped gives me a prescription, I can give him a phone number to call it in. The ped tells me that it might not be an infection, since she has no fever, and he gives me another possible cause and tells me to keep her on Motrin for 48 hours for the discomfort, and as long as she is fever free, that should help. When 48 hours is up, we'll be on our way home, and they will meet me at the ER at home if she isn't any better. Of course, I have no motrin with me, and head out the door to go to Walgreen's, when I take a chance and see if they keep an emergency supply at the front desk, even though the gift shop is closed. THEY DO!!! Good to know! By 12:45, Eilis is resting comfortably, and I am wide awake watching bad TV until 3:30.

The alarm goes off at 6, and I bleary eyed walk to the shower while the kids sleep. Sleep is overrated, I tell myself, and when I was their age, on vacation with my dad, he'd have us up and out the door by this time of day to make the most of the trip. My kids are too soft!

We have made an ADR for Crystal Palace, and I toyed with the idea of heading over to AK so Eilis can ride Kali River Rapids, but with the expected heat today, I decide park hopping may not be an option, especially if Eilis is not feeling well, and we head to MK. By the time the place opens, we are there. Eilis feels fine today, but I make her take the Motrin anyway. And now Gracie is suffering from a runny nose :-( We'll deal with it as needed - there are things to do!

The crowd is really manageable, and we ride Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride, the Jungle Cruise, and Big Thunder Mountain in pretty quick succession. We have discovered something about Grace that I'm not especially proud of. I ran to get drinks when the kids were on Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride, and as I am heading back, I hear this God awful screaming banshee of a kid as the ride comes to a stop. Thank God, I think, that that is not my child. Oh no. That is my child. Brighid is walking off of the ride with Gracie SCREAMING and holding her arms back, trying to wiggle out of Brighid's arms to get back on the ride. I do a quick look around to see where I can hide and act like these are not my children walking towards me yelling, "Mom, Mommy, Mom!!! Can you take this baby???" Darn. I am the only "mom" looking person in the vicinity.

Grace continues to scream and reach back towards Aladdin as if we are kidnapping her, and by the time we are in the very short line for the Jungle Cruise, I am hoping a security guard will believe that I have kidnapped her and come get her from me to try to find her real parents. No such luck. But once we are on the Jungle Cruise, she is settled and happy again. Whew. We have a brief version of the same reaction after she exits the Jungle Cruise too, but I keep reassuring her that we are going to see something else and ride another ride, and she eventually seems to understand that getting off of one thing leads us to something else more wonderful and more magical.

Brighid and Eilis ride BTMR, and then we head over to Buzz Lightyear, for which Brighid has already acquired Fast Passes :-) We have not had to wait for anything yet, and Buzz is a great ride. I am on my way to controlling the universe, despite having a baby in my lap, when my laser gun stops working :-( I try to reach around and use the one on Grace's side, but her chubby little hands are clasped pretty tightly around it, and I end up sitting there actually enjoying the ride, looking at the different targets I could be hitting.

There is just enough time to do the Tomorrowland Transit Authority ride before heading to lunch, and as it has done with her sister's before her, it lulls Grace to sleep. By the time we are actually seated at Crystal Palace, Gracie has had a nice 30 minute nap, and she is hungry and in good spirits for lunch. Until the characters come near her. She is just about climbing out of the high chair, but then as soon as they go away, she is yelling for them to come back, putting her little hands up in the "Come back, come get me" pose. Poor Tigger actually thinks she means this, and turns around to come back to her, only to have her jump out of her skin when he gets close.

I had originally planned to leave after lunch and take the kids back to the hotel for some rest, but the lunch rejuvenates the lot of them, so we press on. Eilis is rattling off the things she'd like to do and like to ride, when she sees the hair wrap people. She decides this is what she wants to do. Brighid runs off and grabs fast passes for Splash Mountain - Eilis' first time!! - while I wait in line for a hair wrap with Eilis. By the time we have our turn, it is almost time for our fast pass, so we head over to the mountain. Eilis has BEGGED to do this ride, and she does really well, except she is too anxious about the big drop to appreciate the story inside. At least I think that. But when we are off the ride, she runs to Brighid to tell her the whole story of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch and the great ride, except for the big hill at the end.

The crowds are pretty thick now, so we decide it's time to head out. We make a few stops in a few shops, and we are in the car about 4 PM.

Back at the hotel, Eilis lays down for a nap, and we try to decide what to do about meeting my in-laws for dinner. Eilis is now saying her ear hurts, and Grace is dozing off, so we call the in-laws and ask if they want to meet here for pizza, so we order pizza in the room and entertain the grandparents until after 9 PM. I bathe the littles and they are both asleep by 10 :-)

Without starting a war, I do want to say something about towel animals. When we arrived on Thursday, as we were walking to our room, virtually EVERY window we passed had some cute towel thing going on - with stickers, sparkly things, kids' toys staged with the towel things. Eilis is excited to see what her window has when we get back to the room, and Brighid, who has been the recipient of towel animals before, is equally as excited. When we get back, only two windows on our floor on our side of the building have no towel animals. One of the two is ours. I tip housekeeping daily, and I leave the room pretty much cleaned up, so I know there isn't a lot of work to do when a housekeeper comes to our hotel room. I know towel animals are not a guarantee, and I completely appreciate that when the housekeepers are busy, they probably haven't got the time to do them. But it's really disappointing to a 5 year old to walk past towel animals, towel clowns, towel birds, and even in one window, a towel basket filled with towels, then to get to her own window and find nothing. I decide I must take a course in towel animal folding so that I don't have to deal with this disappointment in the future :-(

HIGHLIGHT - Eilis' first ride on Splash Mountain
LOWLIGHT - Eilis' sore ear and the empty window :-(

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