San Diego

We had a great Thanksgiving. Chad, Kate, Donna, and I went to San Diego for a long weekend. We stayed on Coronado Island at the Loews. It was beautiful there. Kate had the best time. She ate ice cream at least two times a day...you should try sharing desert with that girl...she will hardly let you get your spoon in. She had a great time at the zoo. Highlights for her were going to the sea lion show and riding the train and carousel. If you ask her about the train she will tell you we went under a big bridge, and if you ask her about the carousel she will tell you she rode the horse and Nonnie rode the frog. At the hotel she had her face painted by Cuddles the Clown...she got a blue dog with blue eyes. Blue is apparently her favorite color. There was a chocolate fondue fountain in the lobby, and Donna and Chad fixed a plate to take back to the room. They thought they would all share, but Kate had other ideas. They said she pitched a fit that it was her plate and nobody else's...I think Chad and Donna had to go back to get their own. (I was a the spa while the face painting and fondue fountain were going on.) She was so good on the plane and at the restaurants. She played with her magnet boards and did her sticker books. She was only out of sorts one night, and that was when we had to wake her up from her nap to go to dinner. By the end she perked up, especially when she got her hot fudge sunday.
She did get pink eye the second day we were there. I called our ped and she called in some eyedrops. Anyone every given eyedrops to a 2 year old? It took all three of us to hold her down, and I am still not sure if any drops ever got in. Anyway, it cleared up by the afternoon so something must have worked.
To change subjects, she had her first nightmare Wed night. She came into our room at 4 and crawled in bed with us. It is so funny...she always walks around to Chad's side to get in even though my side is the one by the door. Good for me I guess. Anyway, when Chad went to get out of bed at 5 she was holding onto him like a koala bear. When he tried to give her to me she started screaming and crying and said she didn't want that water. She was terrified, and would not let go of Chad. Finally she came to me, but she never completely woke up. When we got up for the morning a couple of hours later, she started talking about that monster last night. She must have been dreaming about a monster, and it sounded like water when she cried out. It was pitiful. All day she kept talking about the monster. I told her over and over it was not real. It was just pretend, and there are no monsters. She would ask where it went, and if daddy made it go away, and I told her it was not real over and over again. I didn't want to tell her that daddy made it go away, because that would mean it was actually there at some point. It is hard to explain bad dreams and monsters to a 2 year old. She slept better last night...no more nightmares. She has started wanting us to leave the door open and hall light in the last few weeks. I wonder how the develop that sense of fear of the dark and being alone...nothing scary has happened, but it is like it is innate.