Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Vegas Baby!

Adam had a couple of days out of school at the end of last week, so Phil and I decided to pack up and head to Las Vegas for a much needed break. Phil hates Las Vegas. I'm not in love with Las Vegas. So, why did we go? Adam LOVES Las Vegas. He loves everything about it. When he was not quite four, we took him to Disney World for a week of kid nirvana. It was an amazing vacation and the entire time we were there I was feeling pretty good about the fact that we were providing such a great experience for our kid. I had never been to Disney World. When I graduated from high school the only parts of the world I had seen were in the far western half of North America. In fact, my first foray in the "eastern" US was to Texas when Phil was doing his doctoral internship, and Adam was with us. I was in college before I ever boarded an airplane. Adam, on the other hand, could be considered a seasoned traveller in comparison to my childhood experiences and I felt like a great parent because of it. The same year that we took Adam to DW, Phil had a conference in Las Vegas so Adam and I tagged along and basically spent Phil's conference time hanging out at the pool. To this day, Adam barely mentions Disney World yet every time we talk about going somewhere, he brings up Vegas. After that first Vegas trip Adam announced that his new career ambition was to drive limousines in Las Vegas when he grew up. When we left Nevada after our last trip down there, Adam asked "When are we going back to Las Vegas." Phil's response? Never!

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. We decided that we needed to get out of town and with the short time frame that we were working with there weren't a lot of destination options. I wanted to go somewhere warm and since Vegas isn't that far away, I managed to talk Phil into it. Adam was thrilled.

We had a great time down there. Nothing exciting happened. We relaxed by the pool. Went to a cool Shark Aquarium at Mandalay Bay, and did the other normal Vegas stuff ("Family" normal stuff that is.) I gave Adam my old camera and told him to take pictures. Here's a slide show of Las Vegas from Adam's perspective:



You'll notice that he got lots of pictures of fish tails, but not a lot of their heads. Remember that he was using my old camera which has a ridiculous delay.

On Friday night Phil and I were very pleased when we noticed that Noah went in to the bathroom, removed his diaper, and climbed up onto the toilet, all without any prompting from us. That pleased feeling lasted right up until he yelled that he was finished. I went in to get him off of the toilet and discovered that he had already pooped in his diaper before he removed it. Nice. I won't bother to describe the aftermath (you know the saying - What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas) other than to say that my gag reflex got a workout and Noah spent the rest of the evening in the tub.

1 comments:

Nathan said...

I am SO with Phil on this. Vegas is like a dirty armpit to me that someone tried to spruce up a little by throwing glitter on it. Still, little kids may be able to ignore all the sleez and only see the fun stuff.

Has Noah seen the Depends packages in the store? I'm betting he's trying to figure out a way to hold on to this long enough that you'll have to go through the checkout line with one of those under your arm.