The Joy of Boys

“I’m Sorry I Threw Rocks at Your Head” and Other Vacation Adventures

August 19, 2011 at 9:06 am (Uncategorized)

All of the above are the obvious adventures of a vacation, but I wanted to recap some of our less obvious adventures, starting with Matthew…

* Matthew has a great affection for rocks, as do most little boys. He loves throwing them into water, throwing them up in the air, and occasionally loves throwing them at his brother. (Just kidding, I don’t think the last event has actually happened yet but I wouldn’t rule it out as a possibility). On this trip, he found great joy in filling his little hand up with gravel (which of course includes rocks of all shapes and sizes), and tossing it up into the air. The joy on this face of watching the dirt and jagged little stones come showering down around him was cute, yes, but our parenting isn’t that bad. We did tell him to stop. Repeatedly. Well, the next thing you know, we’re trying to catch a peek at a grizzly bear while Matthew is at it again. This time, his shower of rocks surprised a sweet grandmotherly type woman, who went from happy to horrified in the blink of an eye. Wim and I looked at each other, and I believe at the same time said, “that’s your son.” We didn’t have time to flip a coin, so I just scooped him up, gave him a quick lecture while making my way over to the victim (who was probably in a hurry to get the hell away from us). I believe I said, “apologize, or else I will throw you overboard once we are on that boat.” No wait, that’s just what I was thinking. Meanwhile, Matthew is wailing. I mean, wailing. (And for those of you reading this who have heard that sound, it’s deafening. I blame my bad hearing partly on having raised Matthew for  5 years).

Granted, we’d warned him numerous times to cut it out with the showers of gravel, but I don’t think it actually entered his consciousness that he was going to hurt someone. So the screaming was partly “$h*t, I’m in big trouble,” but also “I’m upset because I didn’t mean to do it.” So, we reach the lady but there is no apologizing happening. Matthew buries his head in my shoulder and won’t even make eye contact. I do the apologizing on his behalf, to redeem ourselves a little bit. Grandma-lady is very gracious and lets us off the hook easily, thanking us for the apology.

Part of the back story to all of this is that we had created a specific form of bribery especially for this vacation. Cold hard cash. Or, in this case, quarters. This system was actually genius. Every time one of the boys sat through a meal without causing a scene, or took a picture and actually smiled cooperatively, they earned a quarter. The idea was that at the end of the trip they could use their quarters to buy something they wanted. (Which turned out to be neck rests for the airplane, which I think is hilarious). Anyway, on the flip side of the quarter deal, if the boys were naughty they would lose a quarter or more depending on the violation. In this case, Matthew lost all of his quarters. I think we were up to $2.25 at this point, so this was devastating news to him.

Once he regained his composure, we went on with our afternoon. Took a chair lift up a mountain and saw a lumberjack show. As we were making our way back to the sky lift to take us back down the mountain, who did we run into? The victim of Matthew’s rock throwing incident. I quickly whispered to him that this was his opportunity to apologize to the lady. He looked apprehensive, but walked straight up to her and said, “Um, I’m sorry that I threw rocks at your head.” I had tears in my eyes. Mostly from laughing because the apology was so funny, but also from pride. I’d like to think he did it because he was truly sorry and not because he was hoping for his quarters back, but regardless, it was a memorable moment.

(That story took longer than anticipated. The next random memories will be shorter, I promise.)

* On the cruise, somehow Wim and I (mistakenly) thought the boys could adjust to a later bedtime, so we chose the 8:15 dinner seating. Really. What were we thinking?! Selfishly we didn’t want to be rushed with any of our excursions, so it seemed a logical choice at the time. The truth is; however, the boys not only need their sleep, but want it. They are not night owls, never have been. One night, James totally lost it and yelled, “I don’t like vacation! You make me stay up until 10:30 and I. JUST. WANT. TO. GO. TO. BED!!” Oh boy. At one dinner, Matthew was begging to go to bed and finally crashed in my lap. We set him down on the floor on the other side of the table and let him sleep there. Awesome parenting. Anyway, as a result of the sleep situation, there were a couple of days when the boys were not the sweetest creatures to be around. Mostly this involved fighting with each other (the “don’t touch me, don’t follow me, don’t look at me!” variety). One morning, Wim and the boys were playing shuffleboard and things weren’t exactly going well. I was sitting on a deck chair quite a ways down from them when Matthew burst into the wailing sound that I referred to earlier. I glanced over there and as I did, a lady walking by caught my eye. I looked at her and said, “oh, he’s mine, but I’m just pretending he’s not.” She laughed and told me that what I really needed to do was find a similar chair on another deck. Brilliant, why hadn’t I thought of that?!

* Next random tidbit is surely TMI. Somehow, the boys were apprehensive about flushing the toilet in our cabin. In their defense, it did make a sound that made you think it was going to suck you right in there too. What this meant, however, was that ever time I went in the bathroom I was usually disgusted. Finally one night, I yelled “Will you boys PLEASE STOP LEAVING ME PRESENTS IN THE TOILET?!” The boys thought this was hilarious and only encouraged their behavior. It became a running joke on the trip. Matthew actually became a little confused, and would ask, “If I poop, am I supposed to flush?” He was probably just messing with me.

* For those of you that know my in-laws, we affectionately tease them about the many, many things they manage to lose or misplace – so on this trip I started a list to see how many items we’d end up with. It included a coupon, ferry tickets, a purse, a room key, a stack of twenties and a glove. Not bad, considering how long we were gone.

* The “key to the world” card (courtesy of Disney) really was the key to the world. You could use it to buy anything and it seemed free. Thanks for all the wine, Opa & Oma!

* One evening Wim and I needed to leave dinner early to get the boys from the Oceaneer’s Club (a brilliant scheme of Disney’s to make everyone’s vacation a happy one). I was walking out of the dining room with my full wine glass and asked the man at the door, “Am I allowed to take this out of the dining room?” He smiled and said, “of course, madame.” Wow. With Disney, dreams really do come true.

* Bacon. James probably ate the equivalent of 3 pigs on this trip. Every morning without fail, he wanted his plate piled with bacon. Of course this is possible, because we could eat anything we wanted. Dangerous for me, once I realized that if I was debating between two items on the menu, they would bring me both. Once I was armed with this information, I was often torn between two items. I may have to refer back to that 17 day diet again after the pure gluttony of this trip.

* We were told that the suspension bridge in Vancouver could hold 36 elephants. James was not a big fan of the number of people on the bridge at the same time (mind you, we are very, very, very high up and the bridge sways as we move across it). We are trying to take pictures, but he kept yelling “That’s 36 ELEPHANTS, I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE!!”

* In Vancouver, we stayed in a 2 bedroom suite with a small living/kitchen area. The boys slept on a pull out couch together in the living area. James is not a big fan of sleeping with his brother for one thing, and apparently the other problem was that my father-in-law was waking up at 5 a.m. and lurking around, which woke him up. As we were leaving Vancouver, James says to me “Opa woke me up at 5 a.m. In Alaska, I’ll have two problems minus one problem because I still have Matthew.”

* Note to self: do not ever again cut up the Mickey Mouse waffle. Only the ears and not the face. Who knew?

* One of the bucket list items I got to cross off was zip lining. It was an unexpected surprise on this trip, and I loved the experience. Now, that’s to say I loved it because I survived it. This place was truly a back woods of Alaska kind of operation. The guys who were responsible for us were, while hilarious, not exactly people you’d want to trust with your life dangling 60 feet above rocky waterfalls. I could imagine them being stoned and saying, “dude…let’s zip line upside down.” They gave us no instructions or training, just hooked us up and said, “don’t worry, if you can’t brake, Billy will catch you!” The stories they told as we moved from line to line (there were 11 zip lines in the course), had me laughing but also increased my anxiety level. (The owner actually allowed these two jokers to run the course after a late night at the bar with some girls they met.) They also happened to mention a few times that most of their casualties take place on Wednesdays, and since it was Friday we should be good. Did I mention it’s probably a miracle that I lived to tell about this?

Ok, I’m sure I could go on like this all day but I’ll spare you. There you have it, Vancouver/Alaska trip uncensored.