Big Kid Bike

Dear Laney,

You're still mastering the art of riding a bike.

You have two modes of thought when it comes to bike riding:

Phase One can be summarized like so: "This is a disaster. There's no way I'll be able to remain upright. A two-wheeled bicycle spits in the face of physics. The very idea is incomprehensible. I will crash on the sidewalk in a tornado of flying gravel. There will not be enough Band-Aids in the world to cover all the "ow-ies" I'm going to get. Now, please hold me while I sob on the curb."

Then comes Phase Two: "I am AMAZING. No one has ever ridden a bicycle as well as I'm doing it right now. Lance Armstrong when he was still doping wasn't this good. I rule this machine and the surrounding neighborhood. I am the greatest."

Neither one is true, of course. 

On the plus side, your dad has probably dropped six pounds just from the effort of running the equivalent of the 50-yard dash up and down our street over and over again in 90 degree heat. 

We're going to rent you out to the local CrossFit place. 

Love,

Mom

The Banana Incident

Dear Hagen,

To fly from Honolulu to Missoula, Montana with two small children is to take a giant leap of faith. One must basically cross her fingers and make several under-the-table deals with Jesus that nothing will go horribly wrong on the 6-hour Honolulu-to-Seattle leg, or on the tight 40-min layover at Sea-Tac, or on that last puddle-jumper from Seattle to Missoula.

You nailed two out of three.

For six hours from Honolulu to Seattle, you were a peach.

You watched movies and we played travel Bingo and you covered yourself in fire engine stickers and asked the flight attendant, "Am I so beautiful?" She agreed you were. 

The only little hiccup on the flight was that you needed to go potty about five times, which is a little difficult, logistically, on a packed airplane. Side note that's completely inappropriate on a blog for my children, but: I have no idea how people use the airplane bathroom to join the "Mile-High Club," because I could barely squeezeintherelikethis with a 3 year old. After one particular potty trip, we were walking back up the aisle to our seats and you started making this weird crying sound and stopping every few inches. "Let's go!" I begged. Then a helpful man in seat 25C pointed to your ankles, and that's when I discovered that I'd helped you off the potty and helped you wash your hands, but had somehow missed the step where I was supposed to help you pull up your pants. So, you were trudging up the aisle with your pants around your ankles and your pee-pee hanging out under your turtle shirt. It's the stuff of grown-up nightmares, and if it comes back to haunt you in later life, I apologize. Mea culpa, etc. etc.

We landed in Seattle where we had a 40-minute layover to make it all the way across the airport. The stars (and elevators and escalators) aligned, and we actually made it to our next gate with a little time to spare. Laney spotted a deli counter next to our gate, and asked for a ham and cheese sandwich and an apple. Fine. "You want anything, Hagen?" "I WANT NOTHING." "You sure?" "NOTHING." Okay. So I pay for the sandwich and apple and we're on our way, only... "I want a banana." "A banana?" Sigh, okay. 

I should mention that we had been awake since 4:30am Hawaii time, and you hadn't taken a nap on that first flight.

I get back in line at the deli counter, and I buy a banana...

WHICH IS APPARENTLY THE WORST THING I HAD EVER DONE TO YOU. 

You started crying...and not a reasonable kind of crying...I mean great, heaving, loud sobbing. You melted down out of your stroller and collapsed on the terminal floor. Everyone in the gate was looking at us with the same thought: "Lord, I hope that child is not on MY plane." To keep you from getting stepped on, I dragged you over to the seating area and parked you behind a trash can. It reminded me of the time when Laney was 2 and I had to drag HER across an airport floor and deposit her under an artificial plant after yelling, "If you're going to have a fit, do it under this ficus." I thought I had repressed that, but I guess not.  

I held you by the shoulders and calmly said, "Hagen, I need you to use at least SOME words so I can figure out why you're so angry." After a few gulping breaths, you said, "I WANTED THE CHEF TO PICK MY BANANA." This one took me a minute to figure out, I'll confess. It seems you thought the CASHIER at the deli was a CHEF who would have chosen a FAR SUPERIOR banana than the one your own mother had chosen for you. Somewhere in here, you also hollered about how the banana I'd chosen was "not medium enough." "Honey," I said, "I don't know how in the world to make something more 'medium.'"

Look, my level of patience is usually determined by how good you've been in the preceding hours. And like I said, you'd been a peach. You had accumulated some patience equity. (a.k.a. Be a peach, get a banana. Ba-dum-chhh). So I got BACK in the line for the third time in 9 minutes and waited 'til we were once again in front of the nice Middle Eastern man behind the counter who I'm sure was just delighted to see us again, and for whom English is not a first language. I don't say this as a slight to Amal The Cashier. I took 8 years of French and can barely ask for directions to la bibliotheque. I just mention it to say that our request must have been even MORE bizarre than it would have been to a native.

Me, holding Hagen on my hip: We need another banana. 

Amal: One dollar, eight cents. 

Me: Sure, here you go. Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I'm going to need you to HAND me a banana. 

Amal: Fruit bowl is there. (points to the bowl on the counter in front of me). 

Me: Yes, I know. But could you please pick one and hand it to me?
(Amal is very confused at why the crazy lady in front of him with a free hand who is literally inches from the bananas can't just pick up a damn banana). 

Amal: Uh...that's a banana? (he points to one on top).  

Me: Could you hand it to me? (I am actually closer to the bananas than Amal. It's clear he doesn't want to risk touching me because some of my crazy might rub off.) 

Amal: (points) That one. (It's obvious: Amal is NOT going to hand me a banana). 

Me: Hagen! The chef says that one on top is the BEST banana! What do you think? Doesn't it look AWESOME?!? Let's grab it! 

Hagen: (Mercifully picking up the banana) Is so medium. 

You perk up. Order has been restored. You eat the chef-selected, gloriously medium banana. Then, you get in your stroller and as we're making our way down the jetway toward the plane, you ALSO EAT THE ORIGINAL BANANA THAT I PICKED OUT.

We are SO even on that public display of your pee-pee thing.

Love,
Mom

Aloha

Hey, y'all -

Again this year, the Navy assigned Thor to attend a three-week training exercise at Pearl Harbor / Hickham AFB in Honolulu, Hawaii. I wasn't going to go, because I didn't like the idea of leaving you guys behind for more than a few days, but I didn't like the idea of spending that much money on a plane ticket only to be there for such a short time.  If you want to go somewhere that it takes a full day to get to, you want to BE there a while, you know? Then, on a date night just a few weeks before your dad was going to head out, I looked up from my beer (red flag) and said to your dad, "What if we ALL go?" We decided that I would fly with y'all down to Hawaii and join your dad for 12 days in the middle of his stint, and we would make a family vacation out of it.

Your dad met us at the airport with a lei for each of his girls.

We drove around the island, checking out the amazing landscape. Typical of Hagen, we could be at a lookout with a view like this...

...and he would be over at the retaining wall, wondering, "Now, is 'dis where the water drains out?" He's big on getting to the bottom of how things are made and why. That hole in the wall is WAY more interesting than a rain forest.

While I'm thinking about it, let me just say: I lived in Los Angeles for 12 years. I have been to Mardi Gras. But I have never in my life dealt with crowds on the street like they have in Waikiki. I have lived in Alabama and Georgia, but that did not prepare me for the sweltering heat and humidity of Oahu in July. And it's around-the-clock... there's no "Let's get up at 5am and do that hike before it gets hot!" because at 5am, it's already 90 and now you're just sweating in the dark. 

One day, the traffic getting out of Waikiki was so bad that I started doing some research in the passenger seat, and discovered that the island of Oahu and the state of Montana have approximately the same population...but you could fit 257 Oahus inside Montana. Oahu has 2000 people per square mile. Montana has 8. 

Moving on. 

THE BEACH

We went to 6 or 7 different beaches around the island and loved them. There's everything from dramatic rocky coastlines to smooth white sandy beaches like you'd see on a postcard. The water is a dazzling array of shades of blue. 

Laney learned to swim on this vacation - she had to, if she was going to continue her snorkeling career. If you asked me my favorite activity from the whole trip, it would be the day we all went to Turtle Bay and Laney and I went snorkeling together. There's a little reef right off the shore, and Laney and I decided to swim out to it. I swam with one arm and pulled her in her lifejacket with the other. "If you have something you want to tell me, just squeeze my hand and we'll come up and talk," I told her. Almost immediately after putting our faces in the water, I would feel a squeeze. I would have to come up, take the snorkel out of my mouth, tread water, help her stay upright and ask, "What is it?" And she'd say, "I saw a fish!" Since there were hundreds of fish on the reef, we got to repeat this sequence a lot. But seeing those fish while holding her hand was magic.  

That was the night that she was so exhausted, she ate half a plate of lasagna and keeled over sideways, falling asleep before her head hit my lap.

Hagen was kind of at a loss for what to do with himself at the beach the first few days. He does not like sand on his feet. He does not like being in the sun. Then, his whole vacation turned around when we bought him a Finding Nemo inner tube at the base exchange. He put that thing on and rarely took it off for ten days. He was perfectly content to float in the water and just be. In fact, if you tried to hang on to his tube to keep him with the group or to steer him in a direction, he would holler, "BE PATIENT TO ME! LET ME GO OUT TO SEA!" More than once, Thor had to yell, "DUDE! A 99-cent Nemo float is NOT a sea-worthy vessel!"

I don't know where that "Be patient to me" thing came from. Also on this vacation, Laney told him she was tired of singing the theme song to "Fireman Sam" with him, and he told her, "I am very disappoint to you."

More than once, the whole family would be walking along the shore, and Hagen would make a sharp turn to the side and walk right into the ocean by himself with his little Nemo float. We'd have to wade in and fish him out. One time, he walked into a big wave that knocked him back and when he came up sputtering, he said, "Woo! That wiped me out!"

We went swimming in the ocean every day for hours.

THE RAINFOREST

Breathtaking beauty. Blood-stealing mosquitos. 

Hot, hot, sticky, sweaty. 

Rude tourists. 

Hey, look: A waterfall. 

The end. 

THE LUAU

[Dear Reader, if you're considering a trip to Oahu, my very first piece of advice would be: join the military.* It's the only way this place is affordable. The (cheap but lovely) military resort right on the beach has its own (cheap but fabulous) luau right next to its (cheap and convenient) Exchange.]

On a whim, we got last-minute tickets to the military resort's luau. I had read online that there were activities for kids if you arrived an hour before dinner was served. They weren't kidding. You two made lei bracelets and palm crowns and had a ukelele lesson and learned how to twirl poi balls and watched a guy climb a palm tree. We didn't even make it to the hula lesson or the temporary tattoos.

By the time we'd done all those activities and the eaten a big plate of shoyu chicken and kahlua pig and mahi mahi and fried rice and papaya salad and a tempura banana, we were DONE and needed to head home to the hotel to lie down. We didn't even SEE the dang show, and still felt like we got our money's worth. 

* Obviously, don't do it for this reason. 

THE ZOO AND THE AQUARIUM

Our vacation went a little off the rails in our final week when the Navy told your dad he'd be working the night shift. This meant - with traffic - he had to leave every evening at 5pm, and we wouldn't see him again 'til the next morning at 6:30am. He usually walked in the door as we were waking up. To make sure he got at least SOME sleep, I usually loaded you two up for some kind of adventure for the first half of the day while he stayed behind to rest. I had to keep our outings manageable...I wasn't going to take two small children bodysurfing by myself, for example. 

But the Zoo and the Aquarium? Totally do-able. 

One hot afternoon, we walked down to the beachside Dairy Queen, where Hagen was having such a good time that complete strangers stopped to take a picture of him, and a group of surfers walking by with their boards said, "Get after it, bro!"

 Also tried the local shave ice, of course.

We even drove out to the stadium early one morning to go to the Aloha Swap Meet where each of you got to pick out a Hawaiian outfit ($30 at the gift shops in town, 3 for $20 at the Swap Meet).

    

CHARACTER BREAKFAST AT DISNEY'S AULANI RESORT

Because Peg Peg said we had to. 

All joking aside, it was a really special morning. Hagen had his toy fire engine with him, and Mickey got down on his hands and knees and rolled it around. Laney had drawn a portrait of Minnie, and presented it to her at breakfast. Minnie seemed touched.  Hagen and Goofy didn't just hug - they hugged like long-lost buddies who'd been separated against their will. 

 AND ONE MORE RANDOM THING

Hagen fell asleep in the stroller one night, and we decided it would be a great opportunity to get a little wild with dinner. We went to a sushi restaurant where all of the food offerings passed by our table on a conveyor belt. You could choose whatever you wanted from the rotating options and pay by the color-coded plate when all was said and done and eaten.

Your dad and I ended up eating a lot of Laney's impulse selections (corn and mayo wrapped in seaweed, for example).

You could even use a touch-screen to order deep-fried items that would come zooming to your table on an elevated track in a little wooden race car. You'd take off your plate, hit the "return" button, and it would go zooming back to the kitchen.

Laney LOVED it.

Yes, Spam is really a thing there. 

WHAT I'LL REMEMBER MOST

You guys were just so darn GREAT with each other down there. 

When Hagen ran out of water at snack time, Laney gave him half of hers. She held his hand so he never got lost. When he wasn't tall enough to see the jellyfish at the aquarium, she picked him up so he could see. 

You made up games for the hotel room when your dad had gone to work and I had run out of steam and just couldn't do another activity. You snuggled on the sofa bed and watched movies. You were both just so kind to each other that you honestly made this trip possible.

And on the airplane home, Hagen offered to share his lollipop with Laney, which is thoroughly disgusting, but also really sweet.

 I'll need a little more time to recover, but this will definitely be a vacation we'll never forget.

 Cue the slideshow:

Love,

Mom

P.S. All of the photos from this trip are HERE, in case that's the kind of thing you're into.