Grand Canyon Highlights for Jordan

I'll try my best to capture Jordan's vacation experiences since she can't blog them herself. I think they would fall into the following two categories:

Potties

Jordan is newly potty trained, and public toilets are an even newer accomplishment. On this trip we brought diapers to use in the car and on hikes. My opinion is anything is better (even pants wetting) than taking her to a port-a-pot, or worse, a latrine (what if she fell in???). But rather that rely on her trusty diaper, Jordan insisted on using the big potties. This is a good thing, except I stupidly brought real diapers instead of the pull-ups. It is no easy matter getting a diaper reattached to a standing, squirmy kid who's absolutely NOT allowed to touch anything in a public restroom (and she knows it. I think she'd fall down before she used a hand to steady herself in a toilet stall).

Anyway, after a few successful potty trips, Jordan started to get picky. Really picky. She'd say she had to go potty, we'd find a bathroom, she'd take one look at the stall and if it wasn't to her liking she'd say "I don't need to go". And she'd hold it, like, forever. Once we had to resort to her training potty in the parking lot, and I did the walk of shame to dump it down the storm sewer. We could never figure out what set her off about certain potties, but I think it was a combo of:

- lighting

- if the flush was too noisy/scary

- cleanliness

- height of pot

- if the seat was "complete" or had that gap in the front

- if there was "foreign" matter in the toilet already

Ok, so about the last item... We were at our "nice" dinner at the Rim and Jo starts in on needing to go potty. By this time, we were convinced she actually needed to go half the time, and the other half was just an excuse to check the potty out and wash her hands (so she could use the air hand dryer). And when we were not on a hike, she wore panties. So Jamie takes her, and then comes back a few minutes later. Did she go? "No." Why not? "She didn't like that bathroom." Sigh. "Well, to be fair, there was a hair in (on?) the toilet." Ew, can't blame her on that one. Good girl. So 10 minutes later: "Mama, I have to go potty. I don't want to go to Daddy's potty. I don't want to go to hairy potty." So I take her to the ladies room, she looks at the toilet, turns to me and says "It's not hairy, Mama. It's ok" and proceeds to have a nice little pee. For the entire rest of the trip, she looked in the pot first for hairs, proclaimed it to be hair free, and then would or would not use it. But for the record, she did not have a single accident.

Trolls

This is all my fault. I started it, not sure when it'll end... Some background: Jo was watching a You Tube video the night before we left ABQ about Jack and the Beanstalk. She called the giant a Troll. She watched it several times until we said no more. She came into our bedroom where I think I was packing, and asks where are we going. I say the Grand Canyon. She says she doesn't want to go to the "Gran Caren". I say there might be trolls there living in the rocks, hoping to spark some interest in the trip. To my credit, it worked.

We get to El Malpais, driving along the highway, and Jordan is on troll alert. Same thing at Petrified Forest. Same thing on all of our walks/hikes at Grand Canyon. Jamie and I kept playing along, and would bring it up when she got antsy from being in the back pack for too long. We also totally abused the game as a means to hurry her along when she dawdled on a trail (a troll is gonna get you!). Sometimes she would get scared, so we'd drop it. Then she'd start in again.

It culminated on our last night when we went to the Watch Tower for sunset. She was fussy and bored from the start. She was done with the Grand Canyon. The tower had a little access door at the base, so Jamie pointed it out to her and told her that's where the troll lived. She wouldn't go near it! She turned into a huge chicken, started in about being scared of the troll, and pulled Jamie away from it. There's no telling what passerby thought of our parenting skills. When we went in the actual tower, she said the Princess lived in there and she wanted to see her. So we climb up, get as far as we can go, and Jo starts to fuss because we can't go up the access ladder to the roof. A lady nearby was telling her companion "How cute, she's looking for a princess". Hmmpff. Wonder what she would have thought of the troll obsession.

Other Jordan vacation experiences, not affiliated with potties or trolls, include:

- the bedroom (hotel room)

- binoculators (binoculars)

- fridgerators (hotel elevator)

- shuttle bus (I think her favorite part of the trip)

- hotel ice machine (her second favorite part of the trip)

- chocolate milk (her first time to have it, only to declare she'd rather have white milk)

- IMAX movie (where she also looked for trolls)

- "Crocodile-face" (my last ditch effort to get her to "smile" for the camera)