Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

Everyone slept much better last night!  So much better that we all slept in!  Normally this would be welcomed but the drive to Sesame Place was about 2 hours so I wanted to get going early.  We ended up getting on the road by 9am and arrived in Langhorne, PA right around 11am.  Luckily the park had just opened at 10am and didn’t close until 8pm.  We still had the rest of the day ahead of us.  We paid for parking $15 then got our tickets at the door.  I meant to search out discounts or buy my tickets online, but got sidetracked and ended up buying them at the gate….for the 5 of us (Finn was free) it was over $230!  OUCH!  The good news is that this gives us another day there, the bad news is that we won’t be able to take advantage of it, as I’m not sure we want to take the 2 hour drive down to Langhorne again.

We got through security and started in the water park side of the park as it was desperately hot, I don’t know the exact temperature, but I would say it was definitely in the 30’s!  This family of Maritimers is not used to that!

The boys splashed around in their new Nammu Swim Hats.  They are a UV Sun hat, and work really well, they stayed on the boys heads all day.  I was finding that whenever the boys would be out swimming they would never wear a hat then their little scalps were getting burned.  They never complained about the Nammu’s and wore then from 11am to 6pm!

Finn was loving splashing around at Ernie’s Water Works, and Liam was working with the other kids on this water works contraption.

Ernie’s Wave pool was another hit, even Mackenzie swam here.  She enjoyed the Ernie fast facts.

Big Birds Lazy river was worth the wait, but a tip for anyone going here on a busy day, don’t get into the first line you see, go a little further around the river and you’ll see a second line which is MUCH, MUCH smaller.  Finn loved riding in the tube with me, although all he wanted to do was nurse and kept grabbing at my bathing suit! He had seen a little girl nursing in the line, and starting signing for milk then.  The other mom and I were joking around about it.  It was nice to see another nursing mom, she’s the only one I saw in the park all day, and believe me there was no lack of babies.  I have never seen so many strollers crammed into a theme park.  Other than Finn, I only saw one baby being worn and it was a beautiful little newborn in a ring sling by her very proud dad.  We did bring our umbrella stroller, but Finn never sat in it at all.  We used it for our camera bag and backpack, it did come in handy that way.

Once we got off Big Bird’s Lazy River, Andrew took Mackenzie Liam and Ciaran on the Rubber Ducky Raft Ride aka- The Sky Splash as we weren’t sure if Finn was allowed to ride it.  I sat down and gave him a little drink as discreetly as I could in a swimsuit.  I saw a woman kind of staring me down, and thought that they were disapproving stares.  Turns out she was a LLL leader, and she came over and talked to me for a few minutes and gave some encouraging words, she was very nice.  Finn slept for a few minutes while we waited for the rest of the crew on the Raft ride.  I got some great shots of them coming down.

Hunger was setting in and Captain Ernie’s next to the Lazy River was calling us.  The food wasn’t bad, but as usual themepark fare, pricey!  $8 for a kids meal!  It did come in a cute little Elmo Head Souvenir  thingy.  It think they’ll make great little party favors for an Elmo themed birthday, perhaps Finn’s 2^nd?

After having a bite to eat, we headed over to Elmo’s World.  This area of Sesame Place has most of the rides.  We managed to ride a few, but the lines were very long and didn’t get on all of the ones we wanted to.  There was also this huge rope climbing structure, Mackenzie and Ciaran weaved their way through it way above our heads.  I took Finn down to a little area for toddlers and he had so much fun playing with the large foam blocks.

Next it was time to get a drink for the boys, I had decided to purchase one of those large souvenir bottles for $5.00 earlier in the day, this way you could get refills for $1.50 instead of the $3.00 they were charging.  When I went to buy it, the Sesame Place employee did not hear me correctly and thought I wanted a refill,  and gave me the bottle for the price of a refill instead of the full cost!  Just a tip if you ever get there some day, all of the indoor eating places have fountain pop and free refills.  I didn’t find this out until later.  We started the day out drinking water as I froze our reusable containers, but they soon melted and there was barely a water fountain to be found in the park.

After getting the boys a drink, we noticed that people were lining up along the main Sesame Street for the Parade!  We decided to saty and watch, and Andrew devised a plan that as soon as it was over we would try and hit a roller coaster called the Vapour Trail!  The Parade was cute, the boys tried and tried to get high fives from the characters, Liam succeeded once getting Grover.  Ciaran was a little upset when it ended without him getting a high five too.

Luckily the disappointment of the lack of a high five was short-lived as we raced up the ramp of the Vapour Trail.  One little problem we forgot about was Finn sleeping on my back in the Ergo!  Ooops!  Mackenzie is not a ride person so she was happy to stay back with Finn, so we managed to transfer him over to her back without waking him!  I rode with Liam, who at the last minute tried to get off, I convinced him he’d be fine and off we went.  Ciaran on the other hand loved it and was grinning the entire ride!

On our way out of the park  one of the security officers offered to take our pic too!  What a great park, a lot of fun for any age!

Monday was spent doing a little park hopping. We started out at Disney Hollywood Studios (aka MGM Studios as I’m used to it being called). Disney now has professional photographers all over the place that take photos for you. They give you a little credit card size card with a bar code and each time you get your photo taken by them they scan your card and you can look at the photos online. There you can crop, edit, add borders and other fun things to the photos. Here’s a few from when we first arrived at Hollywood Studios:

Yes we’re all in tie-dyes, and we weren’t the only ones either!

I love that last shot. The photographer told us all to point at that one spot and when told is there’d be a surprise in the pic!

We decided to go grab some Fast Passes for some of the more popular bigger rides like the Tower of Terror and Areosmith’s Rockin’ Rollercoaster. You may be asking, “What is a Fast Pass?” At the majority of the bigger rides, Disney has set up a FastPass Distribution. You put in your Park Pass, and out pops a ticket telling you when to come back to the ride. They normally give you a timeframe of an hour. What this allows you to do and pass by the longer line up and only wait for a few minutes! It was great, I highly recommend using this feature. The most we had to wait for any ride was about 15 minutes, but the wait times listed on the rides were much longer.

After getting our Fast Passes we knew we had about an hour to explore some other parts of the part and happened upon the Star Wars ride called Star Tours. The boys were very excited about this. Ciaran just made the height restriction of 40 inches. I was a little worried about this as I had been reading online that some kids were being turned away when they got to the ride even though they were measuring fine at the first part of the line. Star Tours is a flight simulator ride, where you flying through space and a silly robot, with not a lot of flying skills is at the helm. Ciaran wasn’t too sure about this one! As with most Disney rides, the exit to the ride flies you into a themed giftshop, here’s the boys with there Star Wars Helmets on.

I figured the kids would love the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Play area. On the way there we manged to spot Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable!

Liam was only concerned with getting to the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground, so wouldn’t get in the photo. Who could blame him, it’s a huge play structure that’s made to look like the movieset, ie. all of the toys, insects and other objects are giant. We figured this would be a good place for them to play, while we decided to utilize our Fast Passes.

Here’s a shot of my Mom and Ciaran

The HUGE Super Soaker

A cool slide that’s a roll of Kodak Film

Ant riding

Worlds Largest Playdough Container

For the majority of the bigger Disney Rides, they also allow you to Baby Swap. Baby Swapping allows both parents and the rest of their party to wait in line together. When it’s their turn to ride, one parents stays back with the baby and rides. When the ride is over they swap the baby to the other parent and their part rides again. We figured that we would take Finn with us and then Katelyn the little daredevil could get to ride twice! In theory this was great but did not work so well. Both the Tower of Terror and Rockin’ Roller Coaster would not let Finn into the lines, so I had to wait back until they were of the ride then get back in line again. It took twice as long to ride because of this! Very frustrating! We did manage to take some photos of the monitors displaying photos taken of us on the ride. Notice my look of sheer panic!

Andrew and Katelyn in the front row

Yes that’s me in the back on the right!

After taking a lot longer than we expected we rushed back to the Kids playset to find out that it was just closed due to a quick shower. We found the rest of the gang just getting ready to have lunch. While we were eating Andrew noticed a co-worker! It was so funny, of all places to run into someone! It really is too small of a world sometimes! We then did the Movie Backlot Tour which really hasn’t changed a bit since I worked there in 1992. Finn decided this would be a great place (and so did I) for him to have a nice little nursing session while on the Backlot Tram.

We then decided to take the boys to see the Playhouse Disney Show and take the bigger girls to the Animation expo. Mackenzie is really interested in computerized animation, so I decided this would be fun to do with her and Katelyn and brought Finn with me. Andrew and the two Nannies took Liam and Ciaran, just as they were looking for the entrance my mom decided to ask a Cast Member (Disney’s name for employee) where it was and he said to them, “Don’t worry about that you guys come right with me!” He made them the Playhouse Disney Family of the show and they got front row seats and a cute little certificate!

Finn the girls and I also had our own little magical moment when we came out of the Animation Presentation. We got to meet Fantasia Mickey! This was Finn’s first Muckey Meeting and the Disney Photographer captures it so well! Here’s a few shots:

This morning we woke up to a beautiful site the most gorgeous rainbow hovering over the Caribbean Sea, both Andrew and I agreed that this was something we could get used to! The sun comes up early here as they don’t switch over to daylight savings time, so the sun also sets early around 7pm.

Take a look at these shots, they are stunning!

As most of you know I’ve been cloth diapering Finn, and decided that since I knew we’d have a washer & dryer in our condo that I would continue to do so while away. I remembered to bring a few clothespins and a string to hang his covers while the inserts I dried in the dryer. I took this photo for my fellow CDC members!

We decided to head across the street to pick up some groceries to make some meals here to take advantage of the kitchen in our unit. I was prepared that the grocery prices would be very high, but surprisingly they were very comparable to home with something actually less expensive! The biggest thing I noticed was that frozen, snack and convenience foods seemed to have the highest premiums. The selection of foods was very impressive, I think we spend close to 2 hours browsing around.

**Note for Mackenzie***- take a look at the photo below, I thought you’d like this

Once we got home from the grocery store, we decided to take a walk into Georgetown, which is the “downtown” on Grand Cayman, and home to many of the world’s most prominent financial institutions. They have their own currency, but the US dollar is also excepted everywhere, however it is taken at .80 cents Cayman dollar so in order to buy $1 CI it costs $1.25 USD. Now that the Canadian dollar is at par with the US Dollar, this makes things much more affordable here for us Canadians. The currency is very similar to Canadian money.

After browsing around a few shops and finding a wireless connection to update my blog (unfortunately our resort does not have one ) we had dinner at a restaurant that specializes in Caribbean cuisine (Andrew’s favourite ). Finn also had a quick drink but was more interested in entertaining everyone else in the restaurant. On the walk back to the condo, we ran into Greg out for a walk with his daughter Evelyn and invited them over for a drink and to play. Finn and Evelyn are almost the same size despite a 6 month age difference, so it’s so cute to see Evelyn walking circles around him and Finn trying to figure out how to pull himself upon everything.

This morning Ciaran, Finn, Mackenzie and I attended our Local Breastfeeding Challenge. I have to give all the credit to Sarah for putting together the great gift bags and prizes! I think everyone really enjoyed themselves.

I came up with the idea of making some matching t-shirts for the boys and I. We all know breastfeeding works by Supply and Demand, so I decided to take a little spin on that! My shirt said iSupply, Finn’s said iDemand and Ciaran’s- iDemand More. I used the same font Apple does and put the little logo under it. Here’s a few pics from our morning:

This afternoon is all about getting the house ready for my mom. Andrew, Finn and I are taking a little vacation for a week down to Grand Cayman! My mom is coming to stay at our house with Ciaran, Liam and Mackenzie. Thank you Mom!

As for the Dinner Fix Challenge, I still plan on making meals while away, as our resort has a full kitchen, I already have my trusty veggie peeler packed and some meals ideas planned for the week!

My next post hopefully will be from the sun-drenched Cayman Islands (if I can find a wireless connection!)

[here] pulls this cover off shelves - replaces with clipart cover

OK, now it’s my turn to get this off my chest, no pun intended :oP As a 32 yr old mother of 3 with 48 months and counting of breastfeeding under her shirt, I’m deeply offended and saddened that this cover was pulled.

The actual article- Breast Assured was really well written (thank you Brent MacDonald). It brought to light that New Brunswick Mothers are just not breastfeeding at the same levels as other Canadian Mothers.

Only 64 per cent of NB mothers who had a baby between 1998 and 2003 breastfed, says a council report titled Reproductive Health, published in May 2005. The national average between 1998 and 2003 was 85 per cent.

Further in the article it’s also stated…

The Reproductive Health report by the council says that only 26 per cent of breastfeeding mothers in NB breastfed for at least four months. Past six months, only 17 per cent of mothers’ breastfed. These numbers are in stark contrast to national numbers, detailing that 48 per cent of mothers’ breastfeed for at least four months, and 39 per cent of mothers for at least six months.

I think a big part of that is that mother’s are not feeling comfortable breastfeeding in public. I will quote another portion of the article…

“In Vancouver, people breastfeeding in malls and the public is common,” she says. “In NB, it’s not.” C. Taylor, a 31 year old mother of two who is currently nursing a five and a half month old, says she has a friend who found some trouble in an NB mall.

“She was in a food court in a mall,” she says.

“She had a lady tell her she should feed her baby in the bathroom. She was feeding her baby in a place where everybody else was feeding.”

This was me!!! I was at McAllister Place Food Court, when this cranky lady with her plate of greasy Deluxe fish and chips came over to my table where I was eating my lunch and simultaneously nursing my 3 month old daughter. Now you can ask any of my friends I don’t drape a blanket over me or wear a nursing shawl or canopy, but I’m discreet, I don’t make a big production out of it. Well this woman had the audacity to say to me, “You should be doing that in the washroom!!” At first I was in shock but quickly asked her, “OK, why don’t you bring your fish and chips and join me?” She just huffed a huge sigh and walked off.

Last Week Dr Phil had 2 women debating Public Breastfeeding. The woman that was against nursing in public, kept saying that she didn’t think that a woman taking her shirt off in public appropriate and that breastfeeding in general “was just not attractive or natural”! My 9 year was watching this, and was getting upset with this woman’s ignorance, she said to me, “Come on mom the baby completely covers your boobs, you can’t even tell that your shirt is lifted a little!” She then went on to say something that I hadn’t thought of. “Mom everyone on earth is breastfed!” I didn’t see where she was going with this so I let her go on… ” I mean that, little kittens & puppies drink their moms milk until their big and strong enough, baby cows drink cows milk, were all mammals so it’s only natural that babies should drink their mothers milk as well!” This from a 9 yr old! Why is it that the most intelligent mammal on earth started to give their babies artificial milk? Don’t get me wrong I’m not anti-formula, but why waste your money on it when your body was designed to feed and nourish your child, it’s just that simple a 9 yr old can see it that way.

Breastfeeding is a lifestyle choice but also must be made as a health choice.Breastfeeding takes commitment, support, patience, oh and did I say support? In order for New Brunswick to get their percentages of breastfeeding mothers up it needs to support them. Formula companies can throw so-called “baby-showers” for expectant moms, showing powerpoint slide shows on the benefits of their brand being the “closest ever to breastmilk”. Why can’t the Province do the same thing monthly and throw in a $300 “deluxe travel system car seat combo stroller” as an incentive to get expectant moms to attend, and show the benefits of breastfeeding. Wouldn’t this be a small cost upfront to the potentional savings of thousands on the healthcare system?

I attended one of these baby showers thrown by Enfalac back in 1996 when I was expecting Mackenzie. They really had me convinced that they had the best formula, and I wanted the best for my child, yes their “formula” was a little costlier, but my child was worth it, right? I hadn’t really ever considered breastfeeding, I wasn’t breastfed, my best friend who just had a baby a few months before hadn’t even attempted. Still I was curious, so I attended a La Leche League meeting 3 weeks before my due date. I can honestly say this was the best decision I have ever made. For the past 9 yrs (off and on) I have been a member of this “Mothers, Supporting Mothers” non-profit support group. Thank you La Leche League! I also want to say thank you to Carolyn Goodaire from AHSC-Reg 2 SJRH. I was young and single when I had Mackenzie which I’m sure normally is a disastrous combination to a breastfeeding relationship. She encouraged me, answered my questions when I had difficulties, and saw me through nursing my daughter into toddlerhood. I know a lot of people saw her passion for mothers to succeed as arrogance, I for one saw it as a challenge, and I want to personally thank her, and hope to do so soon face to face, but if you’ve managed to find this Carolyn..”Thank you for your support!”

Back to the original reason for this entry today, [here] has been completely hippocritical pulling this cover. I realize it’s not censorship as it’s their publication and they can do what they please with it, but this came down to dollars and cents. Supposedly advertisers and storefront distributors of the paper threatened to pull advertising and not distribute the paper if the “offensive cover” was not changed. I’d love to know which advertisers and distributors threatened to pull [here], but we’ll never find out who “they” were so maybe I’ll just boycott [here] in the meantime? I don’t get it? They’re publishing an article on how more support is needed to elevate NB’s numbers, but a baby can’t be shown breastfeeding on the cover? How are we to normalize and encourage breastfeeding in this province, when [here] is sending this mixed message?