3 days after the Fall season began, the weather is starting to get cold in the morning. A fleece lined jacket can totally keep you warm. It’s time to bring out all the long sleeve uniform shirts for William.
Fall Is Here!
Month: September 2019
It Hurts!
When we were watching TV at night, William asked for a bandage; he said , “It hurts!”. Where? – I asked.
He showed me his little toe that was bleeding. I asked what happened but he did not answer.
I wish that one day he’ll learn how to describe what happened in the past. Questions like What did you do in the classroom, what did you eat for lunch at school, etc. he usually doesn’t give me the answer right away. Some times I have to ask several times. If I get lucky he’ll reply in 1 or 2 words; most of the time he just simply doesn’t answer.
Not sure it’s because he doesn’t remember what happened or he doesn’t understand the question or he doesn’t know how to describe.
Love Gymnastic!
It was William’s 4th class at New Hope Gymnastics. Watching William playing in the class is fun. He looks at the coach and tries to do what’s the coaching is doing, especially during the stretch time. He’s really enjoying doing any activity in the class. The only issue he has is to wait for his turn: he cannot sit still on his spot (he chose the red square on the carpet), he’d sit down for a few seconds and the stand up and walk around the room; some times he’d run out of room to the hallway or just to sit on the chair in the waiting room. I’d try to remind him to ask the coach’s permission whenever he needs to go.
Last week there were no-one showed up so it was just coach Paul and William, he did great, no running around and listening to coach all the time. I guess one-on-one would be best for him because he doesn’t have to wait for his turn.
There are 3 other children in the class who’s about the same age: 5 or 6 years old: 2 girls Kira & Olivia and 1 boy Dean.
The class starts at 6:30 PM on Tuesdays; around 7:00 PM, the coach will take them to the big room to play in the foam pit or to work on the rope. This is William’s favorite time. They stay there for about 15 minutes and then go back to their room, which I think is a good size for the children: enough space for few children and there are 2 bars which are appropriate for their height perfectly.
Coach Paul is great; he’s so patient and nice; never see him mad or yell when the kids are not listening or running around. He’d just talk individually to the child in a very soft voice to make sure the child understands what he/she did wrong.
At the end of the class, everyone gathers & sits down around coach Paul and gets to pick 2 stickers of their choice before going home. There’s always a smile on William’s face when we’re leaving the gym.
If I know he loves gymnastics so much, I would send him to this gym sooner.
It’s Friday
Another week has passed; here’s a pic of William before heading to school. He still does not like to take pictures and to look directly at the camera. It’s hard to take a good picture of him.
Got Bit By His Peer
On Monday, I got a call from a nurse that William got bit by Ethan; and that Mrs. Newman was doing a report to the principal.
I asked if it hurts in the evening when I got home from work; he said “No!”.
Seems like Ethan and William don’t get along well; the other day William said Ethan hit his head.
Update:
It’s been a week but the mark is still dark!
First Time At Legoland Hotel
Sunday 9/8 – Monday 9/9
More Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/AnPnwLYJSQMk8E2M6
William has been watching clips about Legoland hotel from Youtube.com; seeing how much loves to watch it over and over again, I decided to book 1 night at the Legoland Hotel, knowing it’s not cheap.
After days of researching for the price from several travel web sites, I finally found a day that was cheaper than other days: Sunday Sept 8. The pirate room is $178.00, plus tax and resort fees, came out about $264.00 total; which is not cheap but affordable. It was Sunday night, that’s why it was cheaper.
I told him about this trip a few days before the departure day, he was every excited.
So Sunday morning, we woke him up about 7:30 AM. He walked toward the door with only … diaper on. So I told him he needed to put clothes on before we could go out.
Our first stop was McDonald to get him hash brown for breakfast, then picked up Grandma and headed our way to Carlsbad where the hotel located. Our plan was to check in the hotel first, the check in time is 4:00 PM so we’d go to San Diego’s Balboa Park and then when the room was ready, we’d drive back to the hotel.
We arrived to the hotel around 9:30 AM. William loved it so much that he ran straight in, jumped right in to the lego pit, ran around the hotel while I was waiting on line to check in. Tim had a hard time to catch up to him as the hotel was so crowded with children.
After checking in, they gave us a temporary card to use the pool so we decided to check out the pool. On the way there, William wanted to get in the Disco elevator. It’s exactly what he saw in the clips: as soon as the door closes, the disco light is turning and the music is on. I’ve never seen him smile so much!
Then when we got to the pool, he did not want to leave! He ran into the pool, I had to run after him to get him back because our plan was to visit Balboa Park first. On our way to Balboa Park, he kept saying “I want to go back to the hotel”, “Our room is not ready yet, so we can’t go back!” – I told him.
We did not spend much time at Balboa Park because William did not enjoy it; so we left around 12:00 PM. After lunch at McDonald, we headed back to the hotel; William slept on the way. Our room was still not ready yet so we stopped by Costco, which is only 5 minutes from the hotel. Grandma and Tim went to shop while I stayed and watched William sleeping in the car.
3:30 PM William woke up and so ready to go back to the hotel.
Picking up the key was fast, our room was 2056 on the 2nd floor. The hotel is not that big so we had no trouble finding the room. It’s a beautiful and spacious room that can fit 5 people nicely. William was so excited to climb up the bunk bed. “You’re gonna sleep on the bunk bed tonight, ok?” – I asked. He said “OK!”. It was the first time that he wanted to sleep by himself.
It was 4:50 PM, the pool is closed at 7:00 PM on Sundays so I hurried William to put on his swim suit to get down to the pool. He’s under 48 in so the pool attendant asked him to put on the life vest. Soon after, he ran to the pool and play with those floating legos while Grandma and I enjoyed taking pictures. It was a beautiful day with white clouds, not too hot or sunny.
By 6:00 PM, it started to get cloudy and cold so I asked William to get off the pool; Took him a while to listen.
My sisters families on the way home from Sea World stopped by the pick up Grandma and paid our room a visit. It was so fun seeing everyone. They all loved the decors of the room; too bad they did not stay long; they had to go home because they all have school & work on Mondays.
We had dinner in the room ( I bought hot dog, sandwich from Costco), then we came down to the dance room, William stayed there and jumping around for a little and ran to the lobby where the pirate ship is and played there. After that Tim took him to the game room.
He did not sleep until 1:00 AM. Both Tim & I were tired and were so ready to sleep but William was still hyper, running around turning on TVs, climbing up and down the bunk beds!
Next day, after breakfast I took William to the pool but it was closed. When it was time to check out, I asked the font desk and they said the pool will be shut down for a few days but we still could use the pool in the Castle Hotel which is next door! I wished I asked sooner so that William had more time to play in the pool.
So we walked to the Castle hotel, it has a very nice play ground and a big projected screen near by the pool. William did not wait long to get into the pool; and he stayed there until 12:00 PM. I had to ask him to get out several times before he actually walked out of the water.
We stopped by Costco again to fill up gas and buy lunch. William ate half of the turkey sandwich really fast. He must be hungry after swimming.
It was about 1 hour drive from hotel back to our home.
I can tell William had so much much; he enjoyed the pool the most. He smiled a lot when we used the dance elevators too.
I’ve never seen him smile that much during the time we were here at the hotel.
Grandma and me, selfie time 🙂 
Grandma Tuyet
About The Legoland Hotel
Parking: The hotel will charge $22.00 to the credit card on file for the parking ($28 for Valet Parking) so when you get to the parking lot, tell the attendant that you’re staying at the hotel, they will give you the pass to display on the dashboard and will not collect the parking fee at that time. They will write down the date on the pass; and you can park your car any where in the parking lot. The parking is right in front of the hotel entrance; you can load your stuffs before park the car. Show this pass to them when you go in / out to avoid paying the parking fee.
The Pirate Room: It’s a spacious room with very beautiful pirate theme decoration. There’s a box of small lego in the room for you to play but you can’t take them home. There’s a small treasure chest near the door; to get the password to the lock you have to answer 4 questions. This question sheet is given to you when you check in. If you answer them correctly, you can open the chest and whatever inside the chest is yours to take home. We got 4 packs of lego to build the bird)
My answer was: 1624 ( How many chef hat in the Mini cafe? 1. How many red stripes in the Castle Play Aread? 6. How many Swords above the dragon in the lobby? 2. How many hot dogs on the wall near the survey ipad? 3)
There are total of 3 TVs: 1 in the sitting area, 1 in the bunk beds area and 1 next to the queen bed. The couch can be pulled out to turn into 1 queen bed. Our view from the window is the pool which is ok.
They provide lots of towels, tissue boxes and toilet papers. The toilet is designed for the little ones to sit on. There’s also a little wooden chair for the children to stand next to the sink. The restroom is so clean.
Complimentary Drinks: The juice pouches and water bottle with coffee are free for you to use.
Buffet Breakfast: is included with the booking. They count the heads when you check in for breakfast. The maximum count for our room was 5. Which means you can not go in / out multiple times.
Castle Hotel: the room key at 1 hotel will work in other hotel. The playground at the Castle Hotel is really nice with a big screen playing movies all the time. There’s a hot jacuzzi next to the big pool but of course it’s too hot for a summer weather.
Hotel Deal: Wait for Groupon deal. If I had waited, I’d have saved around $60.00 for the same room & same date. But booking with the hotel is non-refundable so I could not cancel.
https://vacations.legoland.com/california/booking/package/search.html
Gymnastics
My sister Eliza told me about New Hope Gymnastics, where she sent her children to. She said that she saw lots of children about William’s age taking the class. Being hyper all the time, this maybe a good place for William to spend his energy?
So last week I took him in for the free trial: he loved it! He got to roll, to jump, to stretch, to play in the foam pit. So I signed him up for once a week: every Tuesday at 6:30 – 7:30 PM with coach Paul.
Today was his first day after the free trial class. He got so excited that he could not sit still. He sometimes did not listen that the coach asked him to go sit with me: he’d run around without waiting for his turns or he touched the bars without coach’s permission. During 1 hour, he was asked to sit out 3 times! He behaved better when he took the free trial last week.
The class has total 4 children about his age or younger (including him). Looks like coach Paul had his hand full with all 4 kids that some time don’t listen to him.
William loves it here so we’ll continue to come but I’m just afraid that the coach will not like it if William’s compliance is not improved. Let’s see!
Fleet Week 2019
Monday Labor Day
Knowing William would love to sit in the fire trucks and touch the army trucks / cannon; we left the house early with hoping to avoid the crowd.
Waking William up was easy because he loves to go out. We first stopped at Mc Donald to get him some hash brown which he ate while we were on the way. It took about 45 minutes to get to the Sand Pedro port.
I guess we were early that the parking lot was full yet; we did not have to walk that far. We did not know the entrance to view the ships is on the left right after the security gate; we kept going straight and stopped by a few booths for William to spin the wheels; we ended up spent too much time at the military displays where they showed case army equipment. William especially love the tank that he kept coming back to it. He also tried to hold a few heavy guns and look at those huge binoculars.
I thought the ship that we were going to visit is right next to the view area so I hurried William to keep going; but it’s the IOWA ship, which we have to pay for admission. Then I asked the security guard, he pointed me to the big dome which is the entrance to the free viewing of the 4 ships.
Once we got in the dome, the lines to the ships were too long so we let Tim stood in line while I took William to explore the area: it has a few booths that give out free stuffs too. He especially loved this “rocket” booth where they taught the children to make very simple rockets and they have some simple device to launch the rockets that the children built. William launched his rocket several times and refused to leave. He also loved the truck that show case the Seals (not real): he got in / out of the truck so many times.
Then we watched the robots contest where the robots throw balls into baskets.
Tim called, finally it was almost our turn to get in the ship, I carried William ran to the line and asked the people to let me get to Tim. Some man really pissed off thinking I was cutting the line but I did not: we were here way before him, that’s why he was still standing at the end of the line.
I still had to wait for about 30 minutes before we could actually got to the ship. We waited for about another 10 minutes for people to get off the boat before we could get in. While waiting, our tour guide, who is the chef of the boat, gave us some general info about the ship. This ship is invisible to the radar so it’s very interesting to view but inside is totally empty. The guide introduced us to several key components inside the ship. We had to follow the tour guide; we can’t just walk freely to explore at our own space. It took about 15 minutes and we had some free time at the end to buy souvenir. William picked the big black coin which costs $20.00.
William was happy to have the coin but he refused to go home; he went back to the fire trucks, climbed up that and refused to get down. I asked Tim to watch him so that I could go buy some food for lunch. It was 12:30 PM, William must be hungry.
The line to get the burgers was long, this place was now packed with people. While I was waiting for the order, I saw William came running with tears on his eyes.
“What’s wrong? “I asked.
“There’s children waiting to get on the fire truck but William refused to get out; then he slammed the door. The fireman asked him to leave because he did not want any one to get hurt. ” Tim said.
I picked him up and comforted him. I let Tim stayed to wait for our burgers order while I carried him to the car. William stopped crying a few minutes later but he seemed very tired and hungry.
We sat in the car and waited for our meal. I gave him a bottle of milk and he drank it . Finally Tim came back with our burgers; William finished the whole cheese burger with a few fries.
Then on the way home, he slept.
I bet he had a fun day but to me it’s still very frustrated because he doesn’t listen well. He’d just run off to see or touch things that he likes without asking. Or for the things that he doesn’t like, he’d just kick /cry and run away if we try to make him do it.
Address: 100 Swinford St. San Pedro, CA 90731
