Those Dots Were Weird

Random title I know, but it'll all make sense after this post.

Our "tropical exotic get-away vacation to Cincinnati" has come and gone. And believe me, with all the rain we survived, it definitely felt like a tropical destination (minus the beach). Regardless, it was still a lot of fun and the perfect vacation to tote an almost 1 year old on.

So now the documentation begins...

Day one: We left Arky in a torrential downpour only to spend the majority of our vacation in one as well. Our flight was almost seamless. I've been reminded yet again that trying to plan around naps on a trip NEVER happens as perfectly as you dreamt it in your head. If we are out of our napping element she does NOT like to be forced to sleep at a pre-determined time. She proves this by fighting it every step of the way. It's best to just let her drive herself to exhaustion - and even that includes a few tears until the eyelids close. So imagine a cramped teeny tiny plane, no elbow room, and no circulating air to save our lives. Insert crying, kicking, wiggly child RIGHT as we take off. It's a living hell folks. Eventually, after multiple hand-offs between John and I, holding back the tears (mine not hers) and wrestling her flailing body she finally sucummbed to sleep for the remainder of the flight. Unfortunately for us, she was the only child on the plane and therefore no other crying babies to blame the noise on or drown her out with their own weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth. Once we landed, I was shocked to find out that our plane-mates didn't hate us after all of that. She smiled at them as they walked by and wished us luck and gave us pats on the back. Phew!

Addison & John waiting to board our teeny plane.

Addison & I waiting to take-off. Note the smiles.

So, off we go to our rental car (amazingly easy thank heavens) and head off to the grand mecca known as Skyline Chili for some dinner. Yup, Skyline ranks above any/all other travel essentials...plus I was starving! Enter meltdown #2. Addison apparently didn't get enough sleep to sustain her more than an hour and we spent the first 15 minutes in Skyline with a wailing child on a tiny changing table in a tiny bathroom. However, it was a battle of wills. I refused to leave from a place that was going to give us FOOD and she refused to be happy. John finally intervened and she sucummbed to her 2nd nap while we ate - sigh.

Next, we checked into our wonderful hotel and despite being sleepy, cranky, and fussy, we attempted to assemble the pack 'n' play so Addison could go to bed. Let's be clear - we DO have one of these at home but apparently aren't in the habit of setting up/taking it down every other day and thus spent a good 30 minutes shaking this one until something...somewhere clicked into place. Two minutes before I was about to demand a hotel staffer come in and rescue us, John finally saved the day...again. And thankfully after such a long day, we survived and were ready to put it and us to bed.

Day Two: Started out a little better but still had a few snags along the way to keep it interesting (and stressful for me of course). We spent the morning (and most every morning for our full stay) just kicking around the hotel and in no rush to leave. Most mornings it was fabulous and gave us an opportunity to eek a morning nap out of Addison (and sometimes us - it's vacation isn't it? ;-). However, Saturday morning I spent on the phone. AT&T coincidentally fried my phone before our vacation so I spent over an hour on the phone w/them explaining that NO I would not be paying for a new phone nor would I be buying a pay-as-you-go phone for a mistake they made. Of course, nothing got accomplished....not surprising. But of course I had to move onto the next phone tag with Addison's ENT doctor on call because she started leaking brown and red waxy stuff from her poor ears. It had happened before but never was it red - so I panicked and called the on call doctor and chased around a prescription in a town I'd never been to. Fun eh? And then in the midst of it all I ended up in tears. It tends to be a thing I do when WAY too much is thrown at me and despite all my efforts to tackle it, NOTHING gets accomplished. John patiently listened to my rantings/ravings and tears and alas I was done and ready for our day. (Did I mention I love that man?)

So at 12:00 we head out to Kings Island. It was hot and probably one of the busiest days to go but it was a lot of fun and Addison had a BLAST just watching everyone we passed by. She was such a trooper even through the heat of it all. We rode the merry-go-round but sadly she was a bit too small for most of the kiddie rides so we headed on to see a Snoopy show..which she danced in the grass to and again had such fun. In hindsight Kings Island probably wasn't the best destination for the two of us and a 1 year old but we made the best of it and were ready to start our vacation. Which brings me to the title of this post (alas). As we were leaving the park we decided to get some Dippin Dots and a pretzel and some water. It had been years since I had tasted Dippin' dots so needless to say all three of us were a bit weirded out by them. As we drove along on our next adventure, out of the blue John just randomly states "Those Dots Were Weird." Lol....nuff said. I don't know if you just had to be there but the hilarity of that random statement gave me the giggles for quite some time - and after the morning I had I definitely welcomed it.

Meeting Snoopy for the first time.

I almost forgot to mention, Friday night we drove around and saw all the old places from John's youth....especially the house he grew up in. It was so fun for me to see all the places and piece together all of his crazy stories he's been telling me for years. His house (along with most in the area) reminded me of Nauvoo because of the colonial style in that area. I absolutely LOVED the neighborhood. We even got to meet Bill Nye the Science Guy (his neighbor) who was out in his yard as we pulled up. He and his wife were above and beyond hospitable. Addison LOVED this part of the trip since she could crawl around their yard, play with their dog, and swing on the old swingset Grandpa Joe built back in the day.

John's old house where he spent many a night scaling down the roof sneaking out.

All in all, there were a few snags in the first two days of our trip but luckily we left those behind as we continued to enjoy the rest of our vacation....to be continued.