One of these days I'll stop talking about our trip to Orlando, but today is not that day. Today is the day that I bring up that day a year ago in which it became amazingly clear that Alexis had a major hole in her vocabulary. She who started talking long before she walked, she with the colossal vocabulary, she of far too many words 24/7, she did not know the word "stroller."
Really.
We were standing in Disney Studios when it became clear. A then 4-year old Alexis kept saying, "I want one of those," and after much pointing and debate, we finally realized that she wanted one of those seats with wheels and she was all, "YEAH! I WANT ONE!"
And we were all, "Are you kidding us? SERIOUSLY?" It wasn't all that surprising that the kid didn't know the word "stroller" because she probably always thought of them as "Stupid" or "Evil" or "Things That Will Cause Me to Scream My Head Off So Don't Even Think About It." We had given up on trying to force the kid to sit in a stroller a few weeks after she learned to walk. It was either let her roam or be Those Parent, Those Parents whose kid doesn't stop screaming the entire time you're in Kohls and just trying to buy a lousy pair of shoes.
Not that anything like that happened.
OK, it did happen. Several times. Any time I put Alexis in a stroller, she would turn into a boiling tea kettle, screeching at the top of her lungs and with steam coming out of her ears. There are no words that can adequately describe how much she hated to sit in a stroller other than to say you know how much you hate to be wrong? And how much you hate when people block the grid and cause traffic jams? And how much you hate when stink bugs land in the skillet when you're trying to cook eggs? Add those all together and multiply that hate by infinity and you might start to get close to how much Alexis hated to be in a stroller.
So you can imagine how hard we laughed when Alexis asked us to rent a stroller for her to use at Disney Studios. Heck, I chuckle just thinking about it. It's probably the funniest joke she's ever told.
And, yet, when it came time to travel to Orlando again this year, I looked at Mr. Husband and uttered the words I never thought would ever come out of my mouth. "We should probably take a stroller," I said. He looked at me with a stunned expression, but then nodded and went to hunt for one. It took him HOURS to figure out where we had hidden the stroller in the garage because, you know, we haven't used it since long before we moved here. Still, he found it.
I fully expected to get absolutely no use out of the stroller, other than the planned use as a mode of transportation for our cooler. You see, we try very hard not to buy snacks and drinks when we're at Disney World. Instead, we fill a little cooler with bottles of water and a few packaged snacks. I figured we'd loop that cooler on the back of the stroller, park the whole thing, and just go back when we needed drinks or whatever. We'd be saving money AND sparing our backs from the major torture of hauling around ten pounds worth of water.
That part of the plan mostly worked. The only thing was that we never parked the stroller, except to ride rides.
Hold on a second, I need to compose myself.
We never parked the stroller.
*WOOOWSERS.*
Anyway.
My kid. MY KID. She sat in a stroller pretty much the entire time we were at Disney World. In that one week, she probably spent more time in a stroller than she did the past four years combined.
It was all very confusing.
Especially when She Who Doesn't Sleep decided to take a nap in that stroller.
The apocalypse. It's coming.
