July 2008

My plan for this post has changed quite a few times since I first started writing it (because it’s taken me so long to complete it!). Before we went to Disneyland I was all prepared to write about the irony of going to “The Happiest Place on Earth”, but when I started drafting my post one night during the holiday I was finding it hard not to feel happy while we were there.

It’s a bit over 2 weeks since we left Disneyland, and life back here is not quite as shiny and happy, but that’s understandable. I am pretty cynical about the Disney “machine” most of the time, but I have to hand it to them, they sure know how to put together an amazing place for a family holiday. I’m sure many people have written many things about Disneyland over the 50+ years it’s been open, so I’ll just add my few observations:

• There is so much to do there! They really pack as much as possible into each square inch and given how huge the Disney District is, that’s a lot of square inches. Not only is there the mega theme park, Disneyland, but also the newer California Adventure Park (opposite Disneyland) and the Downtown Disney District which has shops and restaurants to keep you occupied. Even if you’re not jumping on rollercoasters or rides, there’s still lots of things to look at, like the beautifully manicured gardens and displays, Disney characters to meet and generally marvel at the amount of work that must have gone into building and maintaining it all.

• The attention to detail is incredible! Disneyland is divided up into different “lands” with different themes - Fantasyland, Adventureland, Tomorrowland etc and within each land absolutely everything is in keeping with that theme, even down to the rubbish bins and toilets. The staff on every attraction have a uniform specific to that ride and they are all in character to a fault. Even the “royal squire” quite seriously informed me (and not within earshot of children) that Cinderella and Prince Charming sometimes have royal engagements that mean they can’t always be there for photos. When you line up for a ride (which can sometimes be a very long queue) the area you stand in has little themed decorations and information to look at, so it feels like even the queue is part of the ride.

• They have thought of EVERYTHING (and then some) for making the experience hassle free, particularly with young kids. You can imagine that a massive theme park with the huge amounts of people that come through every day has the potential to be a nightmare with crowds and confusion, but its really not. There are signs everywhere telling you how long the wait is for different rides, on the most popular ones they have a Fastpass system allowing you to book in a few hours ahead and avoid queuing at all, there’s always somewhere safe to park the stroller if you need to, ramps everywhere… I’ve barely heard a cross word spoken anywhere - about the only drama you see is the inevitable tantrums from kids who can’t take all the excitement, heat and sugar any longer. The girls had a few mini-meltdowns, but thankfully nothing too bad.

• This place is SO CLEAN! It’s even cleaner than Canberra! Seriously, I saw almost no rubbish on the ground, the gardens are immaculate, and the toilets are spotless. It has a lot to do with all the staff they have constantly cleaning up throughout the day and the army of cleaners who come in every night at midnight and work till 8am polishing everything ready for another onslaught!

So, all in all, I actually had a good time. I was making a conscious effort not to think too much about what was to came after we left LA (and surprisingly succeeded since we were pretty busy racing round Disneyland) and enjoying it for what it was - a fun family holiday.

Most importantly, though, the kids had a BALL! It was really a dream come true for Guerita in particular and sometimes she was barely able to contain her excitement. The last time I was there (12 years ago) Rocky and I raced round from rollercoaster to rollercoaster and were barely aware of all the stuff there is for little kids. I wondered before we came whether there’d be enough for them to do, but there was actually heaps! We spent a lot of time the first day in Toontown, meeting Mickey & Minnie Mouse, Goofy and Pluto,

then in Fantasyland which includes a lot of the classic rides like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and the Tea Cups and then in a new section called Princess Fantasy Faire where you can meet an have photos with Disney Princesses, attend a coronation ceremony and have a story read by one of the Princesses. Guerita was IN HEAVEN! She barely even complained about queuing for an hour to meet the princesses and was starstruck and thrilled when she finally met them. They do a really good job, those princesses, actually - they take some time to really chat with each child and make them feel special. Pocahontas even practiced some ballet moves with Guerita and Ariel chatted away about how much she liked to swim in the Great Barrier Reef. I know I have reservations about the messages in the Disney Princess movies, but it was hard not to smile at the look on Guerita’s face when she was meeting them.

The surprising thing was how much Chiq loved it too. To be honest, I thought it would be all a bit over her head and she would be limited in what she could do, but she was able to sit on our laps on most of the sedate rides (which is all we were really doing) and she really enjoyed the character meet and greets too. Her absolute highlight was meeting Winnie the Pooh - it was amazing how excited she was to see him and how affectionate with him - she gave him a huge hug and wouldn’t let go - I actually had to pry her away from him as she protested loudly.

She was also pretty keen on Pluto and Minnie Mouse and has decided she likes the Princesses too now so today when we had the extra special event of having lunch in Ariel’s Grotto and meeting 4 other princesses (something we booked in for beforehand - Guerita tells me it was the “best thing ever”) Chiq was hugging them too and getting right into the Princess worship like her sister.

For me, the highlights (other than watching the kids enjoyment of everything) were the parades. Firstly we watched one in Disneyland with the traditional Disney characters - princesses, Pinocchio, The Lion King and Mickey Mouse.

We also spent a day in the California Adventure park which had a parade with characters from the more recent Pixar movies - Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Toy Story. The amount of work and money gone into each one of the floats is incredible, and both parades had about 10 floats so they were pretty impressive.

The California Adventure Park’s main attraction is an ENORMOUS rollercoaster (which we didn’t brave) but it also had a few rides for the younger ones like Monster’s Inc and a Little Mermaid Carousel and of course, lots of characters to meet.

Most impressive though were all the shows on offer at California Adventure - Muppets in 3D, Playhouse Disney and an awesome Aladdin Musical - this was like a 45 minute Broadway Show with excellent performances, beautiful costumes and elaborate sets including a life-sized elephant “puppet” that walked through the audience and a flying carpet carrying Aladdin and Princess Jasmine high above the stage.

We stayed in one of the Disneyland hotels, which as well being very convenient (a 5 minute walk to the theme parks) was also an extension of the holiday, from the Mickey Mouse shaped shampoo bottles in the bathroom to the statue of Goofy in the lobby

to the Character Breakfast in the hotel restaurant. We went to the Lilo and Stitch Hawaiian Breakfast and also got to meet Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck and Goofy in holiday mode (Hawaiian shirts all round).

So, all in all, it was a fun holiday. I’m confident it was the right decision to stick to the plan and stay on for our visit to Disneyland. Most importantly the kids had a wonderful time and Guerita is still talking about all the great things she saw and did there.

It’s been hard finding time to blog lately, because things have been quite busy round here. Mostly in a good way - enjoying the company of family & friends kind of way, and moving on with life.

Here’s a photo I took the other morning from the balcony of my parent’s house. I love the colours of the morning sun - it’s one of the (very) few benefits of Chiq still being a bit jet-lagged and waking up at 5.30am each day.

My cousin is here from Sydney at the moment which is wonderful. I’m pretty lucky to have such a good friend in my family; it’s just a shame she lives so far away. The girls and I will visit her soon, though, so the goodbyes next week won’t be so bad.

It’s also been a busy week with Guerita starting her first day of Pre-Primary at the local school (local to our house that the girls and I will be moving into in a few weeks).

I was a bit apprehensive about this step for her. My usually sociable and confident girl has been pretty fragile and shy lately (for obvious reasons) and told me she was nervous about making new friends. I wasn’t even sure she had a place until the day before school went back since they had to see me in person to confirm the place, so the preparation was a bit last minute.

Mostly she has been OK with the new school. Quite excited to go and interested in everything, but there’s been a few tears at crunch time when I have to leave her there. The teacher is really lovely though and the other kids and mothers I have met in the playground are very friendly and welcoming so I am really happy with the school so far. It was a factor in buying the house 2 years ago before we moved to Mexico and seems to have been a good decision.

Last night I went to see the Wallabies play the Springboks with my whole family and it was a great night out! We were part of the 42,000 strong crowd shivering through the match (and feeling thankful it wasn’t the day before when Perth had a mini-tornado and howling wind and rain).

The best thing - the Wallabies won, despite being the underdogs! I really enjoyed going to such an Australian event - singing along with the National Anthem and Waltzing Matilda and cheering on our team.

Plus, I had a play with my new zoom lens which is great! We had good seats not far from the try line but this allowed me to get right in on the action - my camera doubled as binoculars.

I still have to master action photography though - it’s hard to get focus on a moving target!

Well, we did it. We told the kids and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Firstly we went to the counsellor who was very helpful giving us some tips on how to word things, how much (or how little) information to give and what kind of reaction to expect. I had read up on it quite a bit so some of what she said was reinforcing what I had thought of doing, but she also gave some useful advice. Things like trying to make it as matter of fact as possible, without minimising the seriousness of it and not introducing the subject with “We have something serious to talk about” because that sets up a fear reaction, not only for this announcement but for anytime anyone says they have something serious to discuss in the future. She also said it was fine not to really try to explain why, but just to say that it was grown-up stuff. I found that quite hard because Guerita is so inquisitive and has and will ask Why? a lot.

So, Rocky came over on Tuesday and we told them. One thing I didn’t predict was that Guerita would react against the person who said the words, even though we were both backing each other up and had agreed on what to say beforehand. If I had thought of this I would have made Rocky say it, but as it was, I was the one to say to Guerita “Mummy and Daddy have decided that Daddy is going to live in a different house now”.

She curled up in a little ball and started to cry straight away, backing away from me. She wouldn’t let me cuddle her and looked up at me and said “This is your evil plan, Mummy”.  I know this is just a result of watching too many damn fairytales and stories with wicked witches etc, but it was pretty hard to hear. I realise that part of the price of protecting them from the truth and preserving their relationship with Rocky means that I might cop some of the blame and the acting out, particularly since they will be living with me and I’ll be the one around all the time. Her blame of me didn’t last long and by the end of the day we were back to our usual game of “Guess How Much I Love You” but she was quite clingy and pretty fragile the most of that day, bursting into tears at the littlest thing. She asked me a few times why Daddy had to live somewhere else (we just said we think it would be better that way) and she wanted to know if we moved to another country would we all be able to live together again.

It breaks my heart, but we just have to get on with it I suppose. Rocky seems to be trying to do the right thing with the kids and making himself available to see the kids every day. I was pretty pleased that the counsellor, rather than being very impartial as I worried (and trying to be fair to both sides), was actually pretty blunt with Rocky and said to him “You need to continually ask yourself whether the decisions you make are best for the children. It’s not about you and it’s not about the other woman, it’s about the kids”. I got a lot out of the counselling session and stayed for a solo 30 minute session with her afterwards. She seemed pretty shocked (although I’m sure she’s heard all sorts of stories) by his behaviour and told me all the things my family (and you guys!) have been telling me - that I’m making the right decisions for the kids and being very strong etc. It was gratifying to hear that from a third party who doesn’t know us and have any allegiances - and a professional too. She also emphasised to Rocky that it was not appropriate for the kids to meet TOW for quite a while yet. She had some pretty interesting things to say to me too about the significance of his father’s actions and how that played out with Rocky.

Anyway, now we just get on with the business of building a new life and finding out how this will work. We’ve been keeping pretty busy and Guerita should start school next week (hopefully - that’s a whole other post about the dramas of getting a place in Pre-Primary at the local school!). My cousin is visiting from Sydney for 10 days from tomorrow which I can’t wait for.

And I am still working on my Disneyland photos in preparation for a mega post. I haven’t even finished the first day yet! Soon, soon, hopefully…

A very wise woman recently predicted that the most overwhelming feeling I would have when I got home would be relief and she she was so right! (You know who you are - thank you!) I knew the situation I was in was stressful, but I don’t think I fully appreciated how much until I got home and felt like I was expelling a long held breath.

Physically, I think the last few months have really taken their toll on me. On the plus side in the first month I lost 7 kgs, although I’m not about to recommend marital crisis as a healthy weight loss technique. A complete loss of appetite is pretty effective though. For a while there, I was really only forcing myself to eat enough to keep my milk supply up. I had actually been trying to motivate myself to lose some weight before all this so this is not at all a bad thing, and in all honesty it’s one of the few things that’s making me feel good about myself. In LA I bought a pair of jeans that were exactly the same as some I bought in San Francisco back in February, except a full size smaller and they fit really well. I was pretty happy about that. (Don’t worry, I am eating properly now!)

On the negative side, the stress has knocked me around a bit. A few hours before getting on the plane in LA, I developed a splitting headache which didn’t respond at all to Panadol or Nurofen. Not exactly my preferred way of spending a 14 hour flight with 2 kids! Rocky had to take on most of the responsibility for the kids on the flight since I could barely move and as grateful as I was that he was there, I must admit I also felt some small sense of satisfaction that he got a taste of travelling alone with small kids and what the single parenting life is like. The headache continued for almost 48 hours, all through our overnight stop in Hong Kong and is only really starting to dissipate now.

So, now we’re finally back in Perth and it has been wonderful to see the family again. They are all pretty relieved to have us home too, I think. Guerita has coped so far pretty well with the fact that Daddy is staying with his Mum; the excitement of seeing her cousins, who she adores is a welcome distraction. Today we’re off to the counsellor so I expect we’ll be “breaking the news” in the next few days. After her easy reaction to Rocky staying with his Mum, I half-suspect breaking the news could turn out to be a non-event, which just means it will probably come out later once the novelty of being back home has worn off. However they react, I’m sure it will be a long, on-going process of explaining it to them, particularly given Guerita’s constant “why?” questions about everything. Part of what I want guidance from the counsellor is how to deal with the long term questions.

Also, I’ve got another guest post up at Aussie Bloggers today - part of the Australian Postcards series. Just a few photos of one of my favourite places.