So much to get to (part 1)

I have neglected this space for the past few days while on vacation in Florida. Vacation is always a tough term to define. For those of you who have no kids, vacation is a completely different experience than for us parents. Your vacation is filled with late mornings, relaxed breakfasts, long walks on the beach, fancy dinners and other forms of night time entertainment. For me the last four days consisted of early morning wake-ups to screams of "it's morning time, it's morning time", frantic breakfasts trying to make sure KajaKid was actually getting more food in her mouth than on the rest of her body, multiple trips from the sand castle to the water's edge to fill buckets for the moat, futile attempts at getting the kid to take a damn nap, early bird dinners and early evening battles trying to get the kid to go to bed. Then when she was finally out cold I would sneak out of the bed, turn on the laptop and silently try to play some poker in the darkness.

But don't get me wrong. I would trade any other vacation I ever had for the ones I get to enjoy with KajaKid. She is such a ball of energy and laughter that almost every waking moment is pure joy. Examples:

She still sleeps in a crib so when on vacation without a crib she gets to sleep in a big-girl-bed. That means one of the queen sized beds gets pushed to the wall on one side and I become the barrier on the other side. She will do a lot of back-and-forth to KajaWife's bed and will generally take about 1-2 hours to actually fall asleep, but when she does, she always has one arm around my neck and one leg on my torso. And she is just so warm and soft and her breath smells like cookies.

During the night she snuggles in close to try to get warm. You just can't beat that.

Trying to figure out what the kid is going to eat for dinner we had this conversation:
KajaWife: Kid, what's your favorite vegetable?
KajaKid: Pasta!
Problem solved.

We also had MeeMaw (KajaWife's mom) with us. We were actually visiting her brother and his wife in Florida. This always leads to some mom-daughter stress which I wisely try to avoid at all costs. Questions like "why don't you defend me more in these situations?" are not going to get a response. Anyway, we stopped at a gas station on the way back to the hotel and MeeMaw went to get some drinks for everyone while I pumped some gas. I was done before she got back, got back in the car and started it, intending to swing by the store entrance to pick her up. KajaKid asked where her MeeMaw was and both me and KajaWife said together "we're going to leave her here". This did not go over well and it took a while to calm her back down.

Then on the long trip home yesterday, when we ran into a lot of traffic and decided to use the nav system to take some back road detour, KajaKid announced that we should pull over and let MeeMaw out:
KajaKid: MeeMaw needs to get out of the car, right, now!
Everyone: Why, honey?
KajaKid: She needs to go home. Right, NOW!
Everyone: But it's dark and cold outside and she won't find her way home.
KajaKid: Yes she will.
MeeMaw: OK, let me just get my coat and I will be on my way.
KajaKid: No, I want your coat.
Kajagugu: So you want MeeMaw to be left alone in the cold and dark without her coat when she doesn't know where she is and has no way to get home? We might not ever see her again.
KajaKid: Oh, OK, stay in the car then MeeMaw.
Everyone: Gee, thanks.

KajaKid woke up from a nap in the car and announced that she wanted some ice cream, right, NOW! As we were making some great progress on the interstate we had to use some stalling techniques and ask lots of questions. Like what kind of ice cream does she want: Binana. What's her favorite ice cream flavor: Binana. What's KajaWife's favorite flavor: Binana. What's Kajagugu's favorite ice cream flavor: Binana. Every answer was Binana. Mind you, she's never had binana ice cream in her life. And I have no idea why she says it that way either.

There are so many other fun stories from the past four days, but this is fast becoming a sappy, family post and this is supposed to be a poker blog, right?