The Saddest Kennywood Guest

Mila's problems are absolutely First World Problems in their truest form. She spends a lot of energy getting mad about things like the wrong kind of cheese showing up on her sandwich, her favorite kitty dress being in the laundry, and me driving home when I'm supposed to be driving to the playground. Her biggest First World Problem, though, is Kennywood.

Hooboy did she have a very sad Saturday.

We've been buying season passes for Kennywood for several years now. They go on sale for Black Friday at a price where we probably need to go 3-4 times to make it the price tickets should be. If we make it a 5th or 6th time, then it's a "good deal." We'll ignore the part where buyng food makes being there a money suck since I could be a bit more organized and manage to avoid that.

Anyway.

Mila's second summer was the first summer when she could ride anything at Kennywood. She was one year old and SO ready for fun.

Except, it turned out that Daredevil Baby was more like Get Me Down Baby and she ended up deciding she was okay with a few rides, but mostly she was happier watching everyone else.

Which, fine.

Another year went by and Mila was definitely more ready to ride some rides.

There was just one problem - the height restrictions for several rides in Kennywood changed. There was no warning when I bought the season tickets; just a change. The things Mila rode when she was one were suddenly out of reach.

But, no worries! She still had a few choices!

Girlfriend loooooooved the baby Whip. She rode it for hour and hours and hours.

And the motorcycles? Man, oh man. She loved them, too.

So when it came time to return this year, I knew Mila would remember those rides. I knew that when she asked where we were going on Saturday, I could tell her "to ride the pink motorcycle." She wouldn't understand "Season Passholder Appreciation Day" or even "Kennywood," but "pink motorcycles" was her love language.

She was so excited.

And then we got there.

Miss Mila currently stands a very average 35 inches tall. Considering she'll be three years old at the end of the month, she's literally "average." Half of kids her age are shorter while half are taller. Once that birthday hits in a few short weeks, she'll also be old enough to need her own season pass for Kennywood.

But she's not tall enough to ride anything in Kiddieland. They changed the height restrictions again so now kids have to be at least 36 inches tall to ride basically everything.

That leaves Mila one inch too short. So, no baby Whip, no motorcycles, no flying elephants ... nothing. There are like three things in Kiddieland that she can go on as long as she's with an adult, but she can't ride any of the kiddie rides, including the ones she has ridden in past years.

Go ahead. Try to explain to a kid who has heard "maybe next year you'll be bigger enough" countless times but yet finds herself too small to ride things she could ride before. Try to explain it while you try to figure out how a kid can be old enough to need a ticket to get into an amusement park, even though she can't ride anything. Also try to explain how she can ride all of those things at other amusement parks - literally all of them. Cedar Point has several rides that exactly match ones at Kennywood and the height guidelines for them say "no minimum."

So it's not a safety thing.

It's yet another example of how Kennywood isn't for families anymore. There are a lot of examples - from ticket prices not being reasonable enough for most families to be able to afford them to the fact that smoking is still allowed in many parts of the park.

It's Mila's First World Problem that has me regretting buying season passes this year. It's also Mila's First World Problem that cost me a crapton of money on stupid stuff because girlfriend wasn't going to quit being sad until I distracted her with shiny things.

Fail Fail Fail Fail Fail

There is a part of me that realizes how very dumb it is to care, but Mila went to school today wearing a stained shirt and with her hair doing an excellent impression of a hurricane.

On picture day.

Despite the stickers and notes and verbal reminders, I just plain forgot. I sent her to school looking like a slob on picture day.

Like I said, there is a part of me that realizes how dumb it is to care. I won't buy the photos anyway because from what I can tell from the previews, the photos are bad. They aren't bad because she looked like a slob, but rather because she just glares at the camera. There are tricks to fixing that, but I haven't shared those tricks. They're mine. All mine.

By the way, for as bad as the photos are, they aren't BAD. If they were hilariously bad, then I'd be parting with some money. Alas, they're just mediocre bad, so I won't buy them, and none of it matters.

AND YET.

There is a part of me that cares because I know teachers and parents and such saw what Mila was wearing and they thought things. They thought not nice things about me. I mostly don't care what people think of me, but PARENTING FAIL ALERT ALERT ALERT. Why are parenting fails worse than regular fails? I don't know, but they are.

Thus, I feel the need to explain how I had a little help in my just plain forgetting. See, there's this thing going on right now where Mila will only wear kitty clothes. She would prefer kitty dresses, but she'll settle for kitty shirts, and do you know how hard it is to find toddler clothes with cats on them right now? I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world, but I thought wrong. Suddenly nobody is doing the cat theme thing, so we're dealing with two dresses and two shirts that will pass the Mila Kitty Test. Basically, she's wearing the same things every few days. Occasionally she'll let us interrupt the streak with something not kitty-themed, but don't count on it. My priority every morning is finding a sort of clean kitty top, so I forgot that there was a bigger mission at play today. Picture day warranted finding something that wasn't stained. At minimum.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. The class photo will be the only evidence of my parenting fail. And I'm sure I will make up for it with photos that I take.

Except that, you know, she's wearing the damn kitty clothes in every single photo. It's as if we never change her clothes.

It's Baaaaaack

To start at the beginning, you have to go way back. You have to go all the way back to 2008. Little Miss Alexis was only two years old and she was all about the color yellow. It was then that a game was born -- Yellow Car.

It's not a real game because a real game would have real rules. This game was entirely concocted in Alexis' head with rules that bend with the wind. The general idea was that you were supposed to look for a yellow car, declare out loud that you found one, and then keep score. Each yellow car was worth a point, except that the rules morphed depending on who was winning. For example, one day buses were worth 10 points, the next they were -10 points. It depended on who spotted the bus first. The only thing that was consistent was that Alexis always cheated.

We played Yellow Car for a long time, with Alexis always winning because she was a cheater. Then one day, we didn't play anymore. It was one of those childhood phases that leaves as quietly as it started. I didn't know when I was playing Yellow Car for the last time; I just one day realized we hadn't played in a long time. Alas.

Fast forward a few years.

The game started again as quietly as it did the first time. Out of nowhere, Alexis suddenly yelled "Yellow Car!" and it was on like Donkey Kong. Mila chimed in, pointing at the car Alexis had seen and yelling, "There it is!"

I, of course, have years of losing to make up for. I joined in immediately with full intentions to destroy Alexis. I was determined to become the Queen of Yellow Car.

I'm still not the Queen of Yellow Car. Apparently that cheating thing is hereditary because now Mila is doing it. She randomly yells "YELLOW CAR!" and neither Alexis nor I are ever certain if it's true or not. We can't take away the point because we can't prove that there's not a yellow car there. Sometimes there is. Sometimes there isn't.

Mila is winning every single day.

Welp, at least the girls finally have something in common. They're both Cheater McCheatersons at Yellow Car.