Transistion City

All 3 of our littles are growing up right before our eyes...Easton's new school has been great for him, Dalton is suprising us with what he's picking up at his school, but perhaps it's our little miss who is going through the most changes right now.



Although after Disney, these big boys no longer sleep with a Cuddles.

(Dalton's Pull Up leaked on vacation one night and it got both of their Cuddles...Easton said, "I can sleep without one!" so they both did...and then we just had them continue when we were home. So big!)

And Easton has lost tooth #2...but he actually lost it. At school. :(


But back to Autumn...so I'd mentioned she quit nursing a couple of months ago now. That was a big change. Then, we'd been waiting till after we got back from Disney for a few other things...you may recall I didn't want her potty training before our trip. And we let her keep her pacifier through the trip as well. But now that we're back, she's been making these transitions and, well, she's just becoming such a little girl lately.

(She picked the outfit herself.)

When we first got back from Disney we started to make her pacifier less desirable. She wasn't ready to drop it cold turkey like the boys were. It had been only a sleeping thing for many months now (except Disney) so it was just making changes to the paci itself. The first day I poked a hole in it thinking the suction would change. It didn't. So the second day I made a cross cut in the tip...again, it didn't change it for her. But the third day I cut the teeniest tiniest bit off the tip and it was "broken". She didn't want it anymore. She was sad about it for a day or two but she did really well for the most part. She traded in her paci for a stuffed Snow White doll.

Well, going along with this, she started taking longer and longer to fall asleep for a nap. Some days she wouldn't fall asleep at all. Or some days she wouldn't fall asleep till right before it was time to go get Easton. So I started letting her have "quiet time" with Dalton instead of napping and again, she's been doing really well. All 3 of these S kids have given up naps on the earlier side (by 2 and a half). She had a few evenings where she might have been a bit cranky...but the boys went through that for a few days too until their bodies learned to adjust and sleep more in the nighttime hours.

Soooo...obviously she falls asleep much more quickly at night now without having had a nap. So we decided it was time to convert her crib to its toddler bed feature--which means we took the front off. She's been able to climb in and out of the crib for awhile, but she never did it during sleeping time hours so we weren't too nervous about it. However, because she could climb out, it was probably time to be done with the crib. We've never had this crib as a toddler bed before. Both boys switched right to a "big boy" twin size bed straight from the crib because another baby was always on the way to need the crib. Dalton actually still uses a so-he-won't-fall-out bed rail so I had to figure out something else to keep Autumn from falling on the floor. I rolled up a couple of baby blankets and stuck them under her fitted sheet to keep them in place and it's working really well! She's never fallen out of bed and she's never even gotten out of bed (during sleeping times) yet! We put her down and she goes right to sleep and she still calls for us in the morning--so far. During the day she gets on and off the bed while playing, but when she should be sleeping she stays put. Perfect!


Jason took the front off while the kids were taking a bath. When she came in to see it for the first time she said, "Look what my bed is doing!" :) She was very excited and ran to check it out.


Semi-big girl bed!


If all these transitions weren't enough, she's also done with daytime diapers. I wouldn't call her 100% day trained yet but she is doing phenomenally. If we're at home, usually we keep her bare-bummed. She sometimes forgets if she's wearing panties and pants. But with her bum bare, she knows just what to do. And I don't prompt her. I did that with the boys, asking them frequently "Do you need to go potty?" or maybe even having them make a trip to the bathroom if I noticed it had been awhile...but I've since learned that's not how I want to do it. Sure they "trained" easily and early(-ish for boys) but a lot of their early ability to stay dry was me staying on top of them, especially with Easton. Three kids in, I've decided to let Autumn completely listen to her body and it meant having to clean up a few more puddles early on but we'll see how it goes in the long run with this slightly different technique. Sometimes she'd go a bit, catch herself and then run to the potty to finish. I have her go potty right before we leave the house and right before bed but we still do that with both the boys as well. It's just good sense, am I right? :) So she's been wearing panties on most of our outings. She's spoken up quite a few times to tell me she needs to go potty or sometimes I'll take her preemptively because public accidents are so not my thing. For church on Sunday I put her in a diaper because her using the potty regularly only started last week. But she told her teacher she needed to go potty and even went at church!

Around the house she's often sporting just a shirt and some baby legs leg warmers so that her bum can stay bare.


Pez have been our potty training reward of choice through all the kids. M&Ms from time to time as well...but when you see this, you know an S kid is learning to use the potty:




She's just growing up so much. She's been going into her church class without tears, she was so excited the last time Gramoo babysat:

She's been such a Mama's girl it's a little different. I'm so proud of her, though and I'm sure Gramoo's loving it too!

And she's still just the girliest little thing...Mimi and PaPaw sent a "Holly Box" but in it was a little set with a crown for her hair, some clip-on earrings, and a fluffy boa:


She's been asking for earrings a lot...well, her sticker earrings and those clip-ons. Jason was fine with her getting her ears pierced at whatever age...as long as she was the one who decided she wanted them for herself...but the day the clip-ons arrived Jason said she could get her ears pierced! She doesn't yet understand that there will be a bit of pain involved, but she says she wants them. Real earrings "like Mommy's" that won't fall off! Jason says that even though she doesn't grasp 100% what she's getting into (like how it'll hurt), he has no doubt that it is something his little princess would end up wanting someday soon. Soooo.....
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Not a great pic but the best one where you can see both of her ears:


Squeeeeeeee!!!! My girly girl is a big girl!

Disney World: Day 1 -- Getting There and Downtown Disney

So it's over.

We've been planning this trip for so long now...researching the best times of year to go, where to find the best deals, how to make the trip special and now it's time to blog the experience.

We knew we'd be doing Disney World for our next Disney trip after our last Disneyland vacation in May of 2010. We thought we might do the beginning of the year in 2012 but, came to find out, that's nearly always when Splash Mountain and many other rides are closed for refurbishment. We wanted the lowest crowds, cheapest prices, mildest weather, Autumn younger than 3...and open attractions.

That meant no summer time, no holiday breaks, not September because of hurricane season...all that boiled down to the second week of November for us. Disney World sees an increase in attendance during the first week of November for "Jersey Week" when the NJ schools have some special break and lots of Snooki sounding folks flock to the resort. Then, of course there is Thanksgiving week which is among, if not THE, busiest week of the year (Christmas, Easter and Spring Break are obviously going to be the others).

So the week in between Jersey Week and Thanksgiving week sounded like the best week for the S family to take their first trip to the World as a family. Jason hadn't been there since 1991 when it was just Magic Kingdom and EPCOT. I last went in October 2001 with my mom, Lauren, and my ex husband so there was still some things that were new to me this trip, which was nice...more on those later.

In addition to that second week of November being best for low crowds and mild weather, it's also "value" season and historically during that time the last few years, Disney has offered their dining plan for free to get people to come. We were keeping our fingers crossed they'd offer it again and booked our trip earlier this year knowing we had until 45 days out to get our $200 deposit back.

One morning a little over 6 months ago I woke at 4 a.m. to make all our dining reservations. Yes, you have to do it that early for many of the restaurants even in the off seasons.

Then, in early September, Disney World did indeed offer free dining...but you had to check in November 13th or later. Initially we'd planned on arriving on November 12th but we were able to change our dates back a day and got the free dining plan!!!

The dining plan includes a table service (sit down) meal, a quick service (counter) meal, and one snack per person per night of your stay. You can use them however you wanted, though, so we could've had only snacks one day and only table service meals another. It just meant each of us had 7 of each to spend through the length of our trip. Children under 3 are free at Disney so while we didn't have to pay for Autumn's tickets, she also didn't count on the meal plan but we knew she'd be able to share with us and at buffets they said she'd eat for free. Score!!!

We may or may not have opted for the dining plan this trip if we'd had to pay out of pocket, but it was a nice bonus and saved us about $900.

Another way we saved was by paying for our trip in gift cards. You see, Sam's Club offers $100 gift cards at a slightly discounted price: maybe $98.24 or something which isn't huge but the leftovers went into our souvenir fund. The thing with buying them at Sam's is that you also get a $10 Disney Store gift card as a free bonus! Seriously! So yes, I made two separate cast members take all our gift card numbers over the phone but then we got lots of gift cards we can spend at the Disney store. We bought each kid 2 pairs of new Disney jammies before we left and last night we went and bought all of this year's Christmas ornaments (4 total) from there plus a stuffed Snow White doll that Autumn picked as her "all-done-with-paci" reward and we've STILL got lots of $10 gift cards left. Earlier in the year I paid our $200 deposit with those same gift card deal and used the $20 to the Disney store to buy Autumn all the stuffed Fab 5 gang for her birthday. An awesome awesome deal that not too many people are on to, it seems.

Anyway, finally it was time to start counting down to our trip. You may have noticed our countdown calendar I'd made in earlier blog posts.

I used paint chip samples I'd collected over a few visits to Home Depot. It was a highlight every morning for the kids to remove one of the Mickey heads.



On each head was a different activity or something to do or think about in regards to our upcoming trip (typed in Disney font, I might add). So there was things like, "Watch Lion King today" (which they hadn't seen before) or "Put this new Disney Jibbitz in your Croc shoes" or "What should you do if you get lost at Disney?" or "What character do you most want to meet?" or "Eat Mickey Mouse sandwiches today". I copied some ideas from this person but made up lots of my own as well. Go me, right? ;)

I also got to work on some tie dying and sewing. I'd read about how to make Mickey head tie dyed shirts and found a kit that has all our family's favorite colors...we all had white tees in our closet so I got to work:

If you're my Facebook friend, those are the ones that Dalton said, "We're going to rhyme!" :)

Then I had this idea of my own to make the boys bowling shirts that sort of "echo" the costume or look of their favorite Toy Story characters. I was going to make a little Jessie-type dress for Autumn and that was going to be how the boys would coordinate. But then the boys thought it would be cool if Jason had a Zurg bowling shirt to go with theirs. And then it was like, "Well, Mom should have something too" so then Autumn wasn't going to be the only one NOT in a bowling shirt...so she got one, plus a little cow print denim skirt. I cut the legs off some 6 month sized jeans she used to wear and added the cow print ruffles:



I bought the bowling shirt pattern in the kid sizes but then had to make my own pattern for Jason's and my shirt so again, I was feeling pretty proud of myself. The kids' buttons were some of my favorite details. Dalton had the idea to use multi-color buttons on Easton's Buzz shirt because the Buzz toy has 3 little buttons you can push to make him talk. For Dalton's Woody shirt I found yellow star buttons (as in Sheriff Woody) and then I found some silver rimmed mother-of-pearl type buttons nearly exactly like the ones Jessie has.

Finally all the counting down and sewing and crafting and such were done and it was time to go!



Another way we saved on this trip was to fly on two separate airlines. We had a free flight on United from frequent flier miles and two free flights on Southwest. So the boys and our bags flew on Southwest:


And the girls and the stroller flew half an hour later on United. I'd packed lots of snacks and activities into the kids' backpacks so the flights down there really weren't bad at all.

The boys killed some time before Autumn and I arrived in Orlando:






We joined up at that fountain and headed over to catch Disney's Magical Express...if you're staying on Disney property, they'll pick you up and deliver you to your resort for free! We used 100% Disney transportation so no rental car and--Jason's favorite part: no car seats!!! Plus, Magical Express will claim your luggage for you and deliver it to your room within a few hours! So cool! So here we all are together waiting:


And on the Magical Express:




We arrived at Port Orleans French Quarter and Jason had to again kill a lot of time with the kids during the lengthy check-in process (the computers had crashed earlier that day, apparently):




But we were on our way to our room, 6241:


In a twist of Disney magic, we got a water view room that we had not paid for:






We didn't spend much time in the room and headed down to catch the river taxi to take us to Downtown Disney. We had reservations at the T-Rex Cafe there. It is not on the dining plan but I'd earned a $25 gift card from MyPoints (let me know if you want to join and I'll refer you *wink*wink*) and 99 cent kids meal coupons I'd printed out online long ago. We went to the original T-Rex Cafe in Kansas City a few years back and given the choice of Rainforest Cafe or T-Rex, they boys chose T-Rex. Dinner was fine and the atmosphere was fun:








Autumn was tired and couldn't decide between her milk or her paci:


Some Chip and Dale Hershey Nugget wraps I'd made for the boys:


After dinner we went to the Build a Dino (same company as Build a Bear) where the kids had been planning to each pick one of the mini dinos they have. Well, they didn't have the one Dalton wanted and he was given the choice to order it online when we got home or pick out a different one then. He chose to wait to order one at home and handled it just fine when his brother and sister each had a new "soft friend" to sleep with that night.

Other than that, we just wandered around Downtown Disney...the Lego store:








The gigantic World of Disney store:







Where I found my nutcracker for 2011:




We headed over to Team Mickey:




Dalton cracked me up when he said, "Look Mom, a hidden Mickey!" pointing at this Mickey sippy cup someone had hidden behind some shirts.


Autumn wanted a picture with Pete and wasn't afraid!




We posed with these "No Climbing" statues in the pin trading store:








And then we caught the boat back to our resort where our luggage had been delivered, changed into some of the new Disney jammies bought for this trip:

(all our essentials for the first night were in a carry on, just in case our checked bags didn't make it to our room in time for bed).



And chilled out in front of the tube for a bit to get ready for some sleep.

Florida is 2 hours ahead of us, remember, so it took awhile to fall asleep that first night. To keep the room dark-ish for falling asleep, Jason had to hide with my phone under my hoodie while he updated his fantasy football roster:


We went to sleep dreaming of our first day in the parks the next day. Stay tuned for all that!