Alex’s California Adventure, Part One or “Sorry, Alex. You can’t jump into the backyard of the multimillion dollar house to see kitty”

Before departing on our week long vacation to Los Angeles, we were greeted by this wonderful sight in the family room:

Uh……thanks kitties. We love you too.

As I can tell you from past experiences, flying with Alex on a plane can be best described as torturous. It got to the point during our last trip, which was full of screaming for the entire plane ride from San Diego to Denver, that I swore I would never get on another plane with him until he was five years old.

(I don’t know why I said five years old. I just picked a random age out of my head at the time and it seemed like a million years away from his age at the time)

Alex’s daddy was more adventurous about getting Alex on a plane again than I was, so he took Alex out to Chicago to visit the grandparents a few months ago - without me - and declared that Alex was pretty good on the plane, wasn’t yelling and screaming the entire time and would not have me running for the emergency exit doors at 30,000 feet.

So yes. I decided to try it again. And I told Matt that if Alex screamed on the flight with me this time, I wouldn’t get on a plane with him again until he was 20.

Alex does pretty well with the air pressure. It might have to do with the fact that planes are pressurized to the same altitude as Denver. And since we live in Denver, it’s not usually an issue. Alex does okay with being on a plane and forced to stay buckled into a seat, as long as he’s got plenty of things to do. A portable DVD player helps. He does pretty good with the movement of the plane and doesn’t get motion sickness or anything.

The trouble starts when the plane doesn’t move and you are told to turn the DVD player off shortly before landing. Hoooo boy, that doesn’t go over very well at all.

Ten minutes of decent into Los Angeles was spent with Alex crying and screaming. Not because of air pressure, but because he wasn’t quite done watching “Cars.” You can’t reason with a child, let alone some adults, that doesn’t understand why the FAA requirements stipulate that all electronic devices must be turned off ten minutes before arrival. Luckily, the people who were sitting around us were quite understanding and didn’t seem to mind (unlike this moron from our last trip). In fact, when we were finally parked at the gate, and Alex was still crying and upset from losing his movie, when we were able to get off the plane and I told him we were leaving, he immediately stopped crying and waved with a huge smile to the people behind him, “BYE!” He got quite a round of laughter from them.

As any parents with small children will tell you, it’s nearly impossible to *ahem* “travel light” for a trip. Even the thought of that phrase sends me into a fit of giggles. For a weeks’ trip, we had four bags, a checked car seat, two carryons and, of course, toddler. Collecting all of that and walking through a busy airport like LAX is something I will now be adding to my resume when I look for jobs in the future. “2005-present: baggage sherpa.”

Our rental house was about ten minutes away from the airport which was extremely convenient and there was a crib waiting for Alex to take his nap and he was exhausted. We usually use rental houses for our trips now that we travel with kid and I can’t begin to tell you how convenient they are. I highly recommend them if you want to travel with your kids. You can cook your own meals, the kids can have their own rooms and there’s usually a washer and dryer there that you can use that you don’t have to pump quarters into. Some places are kid friendly (and if they’re not, they’ll usually say so) and may have some toys available so you don’t have to overload your luggage with toys from home. We use Vacation Rentals By Owner to search for places when we travel and we’ve had some fantastic experiences. To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to hotels. They seem so confining after having an entire house to yourself. Did I mention the laundry?

And with a view like this….well, that’s another reason to not rent a hotel room. Especially for sunsets.

Next day was pretty busy doing touristy things. We went to the Manhattan Beach pier to watch the surfers hanging ten and wiping out. Alex watched pretty intently, even nodding when asked if he wanted to do that someday. Alex ran around the end of the pier and chased daddy for a bit while they drank their smoothies.

If only I could step outside in the mornings and do something like this before work. *sigh*

After a nice walk up the pedestrian friendly walkways of Manhattan Beach and Alex wanting to great every dog AND cat that he saw on the way (”Um, Alex? You can’t hop the fence into that person’s multi-million dollar deck to see kitty. Sorry.” Clearly he was missing his kitties back at home), we went to the Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific in, appropriately, Long Beach. It’s a really nice aquarium; some of it inside and some of it outside with a lot of kid-friendly exhibits and some water play areas for the kids to cool off and burn off some steam. Alex’s absolute favorite part of the aquarium - the manta ray exhibit. He loved putting his hand in the water and watching the rays swim up to him and flap at him. I’m not so crazy about touching fish, so I begged off by saying that I needed to document the moment. Er…yeah, that’s right.

If you do go to the Long Beach Aquarium, check out the cafeteria and try to get a booth by the windows that overlook the seal tank. It’s pretty entertaining, especially when it’s feeding time for the seals.

After a long day full of sunshine, fish and water, Alex settled in for a long night’s sleep to the sounds of the ocean waves. He was going to need his sleep for what came next the following day - Disneyland.

Next part - the insanity that is Disneyland, or “How far can we push a toddler without a nap?”