Well... We Tried

Time for more quality family time. The plan: a one-day trip to Cincinnati to watch Mirra's first Cardinal game, stay overnight, and swim in the hotel pool.

Great in theory, but in reality we overestimated Mirra's tolerance for a change in routine.

First, we time the two-hour drive for Mirra's naptime. We think she will sleep in the car then be ready for a longer night. Both kids fell asleep 30 minutes from our destination. Not the 1.5-2 hour nap we anticipated. We check into the hotel and go to the pool. In Drew's words: "The water is cold." He still splashes around and has a good time. I should tell you that Drew adapts very well to hotel life with the pools and elevators and the poeple. He was so excited and friendly upon our arrival that the hotel staff wanted to hire him and predicted he would be successful in the hospitality field.

So then we try to get the kids to lay down for a little bit before leaving for the game. They had other ideas, like climbing around and jumping on the beds. So onward to The Great American Ballpark we go. Dave, we were thinking of you! We park and stop for dinner on our walk to the park. The park is great. It has a lot of character and the prices were reasonable for a professional game. The view of the Ohio River from the stands is awesome.

Drew loved it and got excited about watching the Cardinals. He danced in the aisles and really liked the eye candy. He could not have been better behaved. I was so proud. Mirra......is a toddler. She didn't want to sit. We could only get her to sit for a 1/2 inning at a time. We thought that wouldn't be a problem if we could let her wander up and down a desserted aisle (we had used this strategy in Milwaukee with Drew when he was the same age). However, the stands here were steep and narrow and not a safe place to let her walk. We ended up taking turns walking with her in the corridor. What interested her were the people. She has no stranger-danger. She very smoothly walks up to people, stares at them, and gives her little royal wave.






We finally left after the 5th. That turned out OK since no one scored after that point. So we saw 4 Cardinal home runs (two from The Great Pujols) and two homers from the Reds so Drew saw fireworks, too.

Now, this is where it gets nutty. As we are walking back to our car, which is only about 3 blocks from the stadium, a guy stops us and says "You don't want to go that way." We look down the road and there is a mob of people spilling over into the street from the sidewalk. We hear from a woman passing by that there are kids "jumping" other people. This group of hundreds is blocking the only route to our car. So a group of us head up to a pedestrian overpass where we can see what is going on. After a few minutes the police come and the crowd disperses. We waited a bit longer and head to the car with another guy who happened to be parked by us. We made it to the car safely and got the heck out of there, taking a detour through Kentucky to avoid any more trouble.

We finally make it back to the hotel and get the kids in their PJs. The problem is that Mirra had no intention of going to sleep in her pack & play. She wouldn't even lie down next to one of us and relax. Drew, meanwhile, is snuggled up and doing his best to go to sleep in spite of Mirra's objections. Ironically, Mirra is usually very easy to get to sleep at home. Finally we decide we won't make any progress and we pack up and head home at 11:15 p.m. The kids were asleep soon after our departure and they went straight to bed and slept when we got home.

On a positive note, our early arrival home allowed us to see the two baby dear investigating our yard this morning.

So after this little adventure we are reconsidering how we will travel with the Little Princess in the near future....and we don't plan to go back to Cinci anytime soon. Maybe when Mirra is 4 we will take out a loan and go to the new Busch;)