White Bird
We took Margaret to Splash Kingdom Waterpark yesterday. We showed up at their opening time of 11:00, and spent about an hour at the kiddie area before we decided to break for lunch. Liz had packed up an ice chest full of sandwiches, drinks, chips, etc so we wouldn't have to spend a ton of money on food. I broke the news to Margaret that we were going to leave her favorite slide to go eat lunch, and she wasn't very happy to hear it.
I stood w/ Margaret outside the restroom area while Liz took a little break. M was still whining a bit about "green tunnel", her favorite slide, so I kept trying to build up excitement over lunch by mentioning the dinosaur sandwiches (Liz has a cookie cutter that cuts a sandwich into two brontosauruses). Still fussing, Margaret comes back w/ "Want out eat! Want white bird!" I think "White bird? What's she talking about?". She persists. "Want out eat! Want white bird!"
Knowing that M hardly ever just makes stuff up, I scan our surroundings. About 40-50' away, I see a little shack with a plastic pelican perched prominently on top. It's a snack bar. No one is standing in line or walking away w/ visible food, but somehow Margaret has seen the shack and knows that food can be purchased there. I don't know how she does it, but very little slips past her.
We did actually manage to get her out of the park without any crying, and she did eat a good amount of her lunch. After lunch we stayed until close to 5:00. She spent about 2/3 of that time at "green tunnel" in 30-45 minute stretches. One of us would go to the top of the steps to help her get into the slide, and the other would wait at the bottom to catch her when she came out, and she would just climb those steps over and over and over. It was like she did several 30-45 minute stair-stepper workouts. She almost fell asleep on the way home, which is very rare. Anyway, we all had a great time, and will likely be doing more waterparks in the future.