The Hemsath Family Blog: J-man goes to D-land for mommy's B-day

On March 26th, I turned a quarter of a century old. I haven't really had a birthday party in years, and birthday celebrations have always been a low key thing as of late for me. Not because I don't like parties, but because life is just too busy and before I know it, the birthday's over.

I wanted to make an attempt to do something for my birthday this year though, and since Disneyland is letting people in for free on their birthdays for 2009, and free is one of the happiest words in the English language, I figured that would be just the way to celebrate.

I have a number of friends who all have passes, so we were going to go and bum a ride with them (they have parking passes too!), however, as it got closer to the date, plans changed. People had to move, were sick, etc. So ultimately, it was just Jason and I. I still liked the idea of free, and downtown Disney allows up to 3 hours of free parking, which is probably as long as I could get Jason to cooperate anyway, so I loaded up the diaper bag, the car, dressed him in his Tigger outfit, and off we went. It took us almost a full hour to walk from the parking lot to the ticket booths, wait in line, and finally get into the park. As such, we didn't have time to ride a lot of rides. But we still managed to fight our way through the forest of people and strollers to It's a Small World. I have to admit I was nervous leaving my stroller unattended as I waited in line, but it was still there after each ride, so that was good.

As it was, I think Jason was fascinated by the whole experience. Small World held his attention well with all the moving puppets and the brights colors. He didn't squeal in delight, but he kept looking around at everything, taking it all in. That's the best reaction I could hope for from someone so young I guess.

After that, we rode the carousel and the Dumbo ride together. Again, no happy squeals, but no cranky cries either. Just wide eyes and lots of staring. I wished we had had more time to do things there, but hey, at least we got out of the house and I didn't have to spend any money. I can't wait to take Jason back when he's older and can enjoy things more, and have another adult with me to talk to and help lug things around. :-) All in good time. Maybe for next year's birthday, eh?