Pictures of the trip: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beansandsushi/sets/72157620735663228/

Sesame Place was another successful amusement park trip; except for the parts when Takeshi would say he wanted to go to Dutch Wonderland. It was a lot busier than DW so Takeshi had to wait in some lines but he did relatively well with it. His favorite ride was the Vapor Trail and he rode it twice the first day and 4 times on the second day. He wasn’t too fond of The Count’s Castle (a water park) because it dumped a huge bucket of water (10,000 gallons) and the water knocked him off his feet when he was trying to walk up the stairs (which resulted in a bruised shin and a bunch of crying).

Once again, Kenji was a bystander and couldn’t go on anything but the carousel (which he loved — he would bounce on it like it was a horse and he’d squeal with glee). Thank God we didn’t have to pay for him to sit around.

One of Takeshi’s favorite rides at Dutch Wonderland — The Wonder Whip.

Here is a little video of Takeshi at Sesame Place. Pictures to come…

Some pictures of the things growing on the deck. You can see little green peppers (pic 1), wisps of string beans (pic 2), my stash of tomatoes (pic 3)… And a little tomato thief caught redhanded!

Last month we took the boys to their first amusement park: Dutch Wonderland. It was a HUGE success. I was so concerned about the logistics of the trip that I forgot that Takeshi won’t stand still for anything. It wasn’t until we were walking through the gates that I realized that it had the potential to be disastrous. I was concerned that Takeshi would have an extremely difficult time standing in line to wait to ride on something that looked so fun. As luck would have it, he only had to wait a handful of times. Many times, he was able to stay on the ride for a second run. (The first few times we made him exit the ride, run through the “line”, only to get right back on — just so he could understand that he couldn’t just sit on a ride forever; he had to follow protocol, which meant waiting his turn… even if there wasn’t any waiting involved.) Note to self: I think this was because we went the weekend after Memorial Day. The very friendly monorail (or as Takeshi liked to call it, the “bullet train”) operator told us that the holiday weekend before it was packed. We also lucked out on the weather — blue skies and not too hot that it made all-day walking a marathon event. At the end of the day, Takeshi couldn’t play in the water park as long as he wanted because he was too cold but that worked out in our favor as well — he was exhausted and we wanted to start heading back home.

He liked it so much that even a month later, he still talks about it Every. Single. Day. In the car, he assumes the “hands up” position as if he was riding a roller coaster and tells us to do the same. When we ask him what he’s doing, he gets a little gleam in his eye as he says, “Like Dutch Wonderland!”

I had low hopes for Dutch Wonderland because it received a lot of negative reviews online but it seemed like a nice play and a very cool idea — an amusement park that caters to young kids. I’m so glad we went and I think we may need to get season passes next year. It was great to be in a place where Takeshi could ride most of the rides and that day was probably the most exciting, fun-filled day of his 3 year-old life. This weekend we’re going to Busch Gardens and the following weekend we’re visiting Sesame Place. I think Busch Gardens won’t be as funtastic for our boys but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Sesame Place is like Dutch Wonderland’s twin.

I can not for the life of me figure out how to upload pictures to our site. I also managed to lose the password/login info for my flickr account so I had to create a new one. Here are some pictures of our day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/beansandsushi/sets/72157619696420179/

Second note to self: Take more pictures of Kenji. Even though he didn’t do anything but sit in the stroller or ride on my back, it was also his first time at an amusement park. Poor kid.