Home. Tired. Done.

We have returned from our little trip to see my Grandfather and our full frontal assault of Disneyland/California Adventures. While we had a blast, I have come to one very important conclusion: taking a toddler and an infant to Disneyland is not the brightest idea this college grad has ever had. We could have had just as much fun, spent far less money and had the joy of sleeping in our own bed had we stayed in our own town and hit up Sea World, the zoo or heck, the PARK. Ah well, lesson learned. We’ll go back again when Anya is around four-years-old. Here’s what else I learned from our trip:

Bringing a toddler and an infant to a retirement home dining hall to enjoy lunch with my Grandfather is like walking through a Grateful Dead concert holding up a big ol’ bag of pot in one hand and some x in the other. You’re gonna get mobbed, but in a slow moving, happy kind of way.

Lily loves to travel in the car.

The presence of a screaming, unhappy infant who likes the car not will invalidate the preceding statement.

While restaurants like The Rainforest Café seem cheesy to us seasoned adults, it is a whole world o’ wonder to a toddler. Unfortunately, it’s also very real and the “storm” that rolls through every 22 minutes can send her flinging into her daddy’s lap where she will cling to him as though the gypsies have come to take her away.

When Lily gets nervous, she doesn’t just suck on her thumb. She attempts to shove her entire hand in her mouth. While this trick will help her vastly during college drinking games, it looked a little manic on a two-year-old. OK, manic but incredibly cute.

While my toddler can be coxed onto a carousel with cries of, “Just like on Mary Poppins!” my infant couldn’t care less about Poppins or assurances that it’s fun. She simply wanted me to get off the damn horse and take her with me.

“It’s a Small World” is annoying. Trying to talk on a cell phone to a lender about why our loan hasn’t funded while floating within the world of those crazy small children is ludicrous… and yet, my husband did it anyway.

Costume characters, while infinitely interesting, are not to be touched. Any attempt by a parent or costume character to circumvent this rule will be met with scowls, looks of suspicion and an occasional yelp. Same goes for goats.

Wearing a nursing tank top with boobs like mine makes me look like I am carrying around a shelf in my shirt. No, you may not set your beer there.

The happiest place on earth is exhausting. True exhaustion can be achieved by only two days in a theme park and two nights without sleep at a hotel. For a while I thought I had a stress fracture in my foot (a trip to the chiro fixed that). My calves are all hurty.

Turning 30 may be exhausting but it sure is fun.

Check out our photo set on Flickr by clicking on the photo below.