Splash Universe

Two weeks ago we spent the weekend at Splash Universe for a reunion with the Volleyball Group. The Volleyball Group started with the friendship of a handful of young couples (including my parents) in, oh, the early '70s? Four decades later, they're all still friends and now three generations--39 people on this trip--are getting together. The Splash Universe weekend was planned by April and Sara, and it was a great late-winter break and chlorinated fun for all three generations.

Unfortunately for us the theme was "how sick is too sick?" as Cora was right on the borderline, with a miserable, feverish sort of cold. She would seem pretty sick for a few hours, especially in the mornings, and then rally for a few hours, off and on. We decided one monkey don't stop no show, however, and pushed on.

We left Saturday morning on the three-hour drive to the water park. Cora has been suffering from carsickness off and on ever since we moved her up into her convertible car seat, so for this trip I tucked a large bath towel over her entire chest and lap and tucked it in around her, and topped it off with a large terrycloth bib. And I brought extras in the backseat. The poor kid threw up copiously and repeatedly. We pulled over to swap the towel and bib for fresh ones, and arrived with a plastic bag of befouled terrycloth and a kid who felt much better once we stopped moving.

Luckily we were able to get into our hotel room right away, so we did a little sink laundry, gave the empty-stomached kid a snack, and eventually made our way down to the pool, where the rest of the group was already enjoying themselves.

Within minutes of arriving we stood Cora up in the kiddie pool in water up to her knees, and with Geoff and I both standing a foot from her she took two steps and her heels shot out from under her and--splash!--her little eyes, wide as saucers, were staring up at us from six inches beneath the surface. I immediately scooped her right back up out of there, but she made her displeasure known.

She calmed down, however, and some members of our group spotted us and came over to visit and help us acclimate Cora to the water more gently. Then Cora's grandma and cousin Ashley came over and agreed to watch Cora while Geoff and I headed over to the water slides. Aunt Tricia got this picture:
I hadn't been on a water slide since I was a kid, and I had forgotten how fun they are. And also how much fun Geoff and I have together when we aren't worried about work or dishes or diapers. And every time we checked back in on Cora she was having a good time, too! Hooray! Thinking about Cora being old enough to go on the water slides with us made me realize that as much as we enjoy this phase of our family, we have so many good times together ahead of us, too.

There was also a large structure with fountains and waterfalls of all shapes and sizes, too, so we took Cora around to explore all of those. Eventually she started shivering, so it was time to leave the pool area.

Rehydrating and drying off back in the room:
Pruney toes:A fevered nap (poor sick girl needs her dad):


In the evening we all got together to watch a slideshow April and Sara had put together of photographs and memories of the Volleyball Group's decades of camping trips, vacations, Fourth of July cookouts, Halloween parties, and of course volleyball games. There were lots of photos I hadn't seen before, and lots of stories I had nearly forgotten about. I hope Cora has as good a childhood to look back on.

Cora's only been using walking as her main mode of ambulation for a few weeks, and after dinner, in the hallways of the hotel, she discovered something she hadn't been exposed to over the winter cooped up in our 800-square-foot apartment: sometimes you can walk and you can just keep walking and walking in the same direction without stopping or turning! She was thrilled to be travelling those hallways, and I was shocked at how far she could walk on her own. Also she had her first chance to climb stairs, which she did pretty proficiently.

She was pretty annoyed when I asked her to recreate the scene for the camera the next morning though (in her only remaining un-puked clothing):

When we got back to the room and changed into her pajamas, though, she immediately ralphed all over the pajamas. And then she refused to go to sleep. She had slept great in the bed with us on our Starved Rock trip a few months ago, but this time she stayed awake into the wee hours, shouting and delivering beatings in the dark. When she did finally drop, she kept waking herself up coughing and crying.

By morning we were all pretty ragged, but we met the family in the lobby to go to breakfast:

Here she is giving us a hard time at breakfast. You can see that at this point Geoff has lost his will to live. Having broken her father's spirit, she moves on to searching me for signs of weakness to exploit.

We decided we needed to head home after breakfast. Cora slept peacefully almost the whole way home. Geoff pulled up in front of our house, put the car in park, and turned to look in the backseat at Cora, and on cue she threw up one final time for good measure.

At least we could clean it up at home this time.