cindy's world

(As with all my photos, rest mouse pointer over the photo for a caption.)

College roommie Diana and her family had a wedding to attend in SoCal last weekend, so they decided to come down from NorCal a few days early and make a 2-year dream come true. We’d been talking about taking our daughters together to Disneyland since they were infants, but the distance, and the girls’ younger napping needs, made any prior planning very impractical. Now both girls are 20 months old (Alexis is exactly 2 weeks younger than Allie) and are both down to one midday nap, and are lively, enjoy running around and watching new things and people, and Diana’s threesome were attending a wedding in Temecula anyway. They booked a hotel across the street from Disneyland property for a couple of days.

Allie and Alexis were meeting each other for the second time (altho they had FaceTimed once last year). The first was very briefly for a dinner at a Thai food restaurant when the two were about 5 months old when Mr. W, Allie and I made a road trip to NorCal in April last year. That dinner was late and both girls were young and crabby from needing to be put to bed, so it was more a stressful whirlwind and nobody was able to take photos. 🙁 It’s okay; they don’t remember any of it, anyway. THIS, they will remember.

We met up with each other right outside the main entrance between Disneyland and California Adventure.

The girls were a bit shy at first and observed each other, but didn’t play together. We let the dadas carry them into Disneyland.

Very appropriate that this is the first character we ran into.

And then it was off to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Fantasyland.

Funny thing about the photo above — I didn’t know this until after I’d posted this photo on Diana’s and Eric’s social networking page and saw the subsequent commentary between Diana and their friends, but apparently, Eric and Diana have an ongoing thing about Eric walking quickly ahead of Diana when they’re out…EXACTLY LIKE MY SITUATION WITH MR. W! At least this day, I had some company. And it gave Alexis someone to wave to.
Dada and daughters in front of the iconic Sleeping Beauty’s Castle!

Mamas and our very excited, very thrilled-looking princesses! =P

Hey, at least they’re both looking forward and not running away.
Our first ride is the first time that both girls rode on Peter Pan’s Flight. Actually, this was Alexis and Diana’s first trip to Disneyland, ever, so that makes 3 newbies on this ride. We let the girls get to know each other at their own pace as they stood in line.

They both enjoyed climbing on the corrals and watching the pirate ships “fly” past. I could feel the hate as parents of older kids behind us had to order their kids to get down and stop climbing, as we just took pictures of how cute we thought our little girls were climbing around and peering in awe at the rides.

Next we rode a flying elephant. There are more photos of the girls gawking through the railings and sticking their feet through the openings, but I’ll spare you those. Both girls enjoyed Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride and posed for a shot on stationary Dumbo on our way out.

The girls did pretty well on the Mad Tea Party’s spinning teacup ride. It’s one of Allie’s favorite rides and she immediately readied herself to spin the wheel.

The girls looking, yet again, wild with excitement and joy.

“It’s a Small World” is Allie’s favorite ride, so we had to take Alexis on it to see how she would react. Allie and Alexis sat in the front row of the gondola with Eric to their right, just the 3 of them, and were perfectly well-behaved. Mr. W, me and Diana sat in the second row behind them. Allie looked around at all the familiar “babies” dancing and sing, and she imitated some of the movements of the Small World characters. Alexis wriggled and danced her way through the ride. She is quite the little dancer. Diana noted that the ride is practically overstimulation with something to see in every direction, music going non-stop, and lasting 15 minutes. After exiting the ride, Eric cautiously picked up both kids. To his surprise, Allie didn’t fight him, and Alexis didn’t fight for exclusivity rights over her daddy. “Hurry up, take a picture, take a picture!” hissed the madly grinning Eric.

It helped that we disembarked while the Small World clock was doing one of its quarter-hour doll parades, which was what a distracted Allie was pointing at.
We were right next to Mickey’s Toontown, so we thought we’d visit an old friend and introduce him to some new ones.

I was hoping for some good photos to choose from, but the Disneyland photographer stationed there only took 1 photo with my camera (this one), and took the rest on their camera, likely so that we have to pay money to get it from them. Well, I guess it was nice of them to give us a freebie on my camera anyway; they didn’t have to.
On the way out of Mickey’s house and barnyard studio, we stopped by Minnie’s backyard (apparently the two are next door neighbors, so he and she really ARE the boy/girl next door) and the girls had a mini tea party.

Then while Diana, Eric and Alexis stood in line to meet Goofy, Allie crashed Goofy’s car into his mailbox. Oops.

“Mama, that mailbox just popped out of nowhere in front of the car.”
I thought their punishment for property damage at Goofy’s house was a little extreme. :/ Good thing Alexis is strong and broke them out of there.

We split up a little after 11am. I drove us home while Mr. W fed Allie lunch in the backseat. Allie took a nice nap in her crib, like our usual Disneyland day routine. Alexis, Diana and Eric went back to their hotel to put Alexis down for her nap as well. After Alexis woke up, they went out for lunch, then walked back to Disneyland and into California Adventure. After Allie woke up, we joined them at California Adventure, where Eric informed us that he’d gotten 2 FastPass tickets for the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which is my favorite ride at California Adventure. It was a very anti-Diana ride, and she wanted nothing to do with it, so she and Mr. W took the kids to the Rockin’ Rollin’ Dance Party (like a dance club for kids, where they can dance with lots of Disney characters) and Eric and I went on and skipped most of the line with the FastPass. I was happy. 😀 I think Eric enjoyed the ride, as well.
Then our two families split up again, Diana and Eric taking Alexis back to their hotel since she had a very short nap and was getting tired, while we stayed at California Adventure to watch their parade for the first time. Diana promised us it was good, and Allie enjoyed it. I did not expect to get sprayed with water by the parade characters — repeatedly. But it was a hot day afternoon, we’d even changed to into cooler clothes before going back after Allie’s nap, so we dried off quickly.

After the parade we went to their hotel and joined them for their happy hour, where the girls played interactively with each other, following each other around, climbing on the lounge’s furniture, sharing the complimentary food. They also enjoyed the lobby, and their running around and climbing on various (thankfully unoccupied) pieces of furniture pooped them out.

Allie learned three new words that day: Di-Ana, ‘Lexis, and Ewic. <3