O Captain, my captain

Last Thursday I took the day off and Maya and I went into Vancouver. We forgot our camera at Gerrit's house the weekend before, so all I had was my phone. The pictures aren't great, but they do the trick.

We got a very early start to the day, up at the crack of 9am, leaving the house at about 11:30. Maya wanted to bring about 7 thousand of her "friends" with her, including the gigantic, winged, purple unicorn, which is sometimes named Pony, sometimes named Uncle Gerrit.

We drove in Clifford truck (which, incidentally, needs about $500 worth of work thanks to the tow-job we gave over Spring Break) into Burnaby and took the skytrain downtown. It's clear I'm no longer a city girl, as I was confused about the train lines and rode the Millennium Line in the wrong direction. We got off at Clark and ran down the stairs to catch the train going in the opposite direction. And that's when I had my graceful-like-a-hippo moment. I was running up the escalator with Maya in my arms, trying to catch the train before it left the station (because really, the 3 minutes it would take for another train to come would have been unbearable) when my flip flops caught on the step and I bailed. Hard. Luckily, the mother instincts kicked in quickly, and Maya didn't fall or bump into anything at all. My knees, shins, and elbow have beautiful scrapes and bruises, just the colour of Uncle Gerrit/Pony. The station was deserted, so I didn't think anyone would have seen my escalator incident, but there was a security guard at the top of the stairs who assured me that the train was going to be waiting there for another five minutes or so, and that I shouldn't hurry or the baby might fall. His nametag read "Captain Impeccable Timing".

We arrived at Canada Place about 40 minutes before the IMAX movie was going to start, so we wandered around, looking at the boats and the Port of Vancouver displays. They had an old boat wheel that Maya drove for a long time, only bumping her head on the handles about 16 times. Then we went to see the IMAX movie, a 3D ocean flick. It was really cool, but the 3D sharks and octopi freaked Maya out.

We took the seabus across to Londsdale Quay after the movie. Maya kept telling everyone on the seabus that the sharks were trying to eat her. Maya discovered some puddles at the Quay and gleefully jumped and splashed her feet. It was a nice warm day, so I paused to take some pictures of my happy girl, when I was interrupted by possibly the grumpiest old man ever. "HEY! SHE'S GETTING WET!" Thank you, Captain Obvious. He was very perplexed by my daughter jumping in the puddle. Perhaps he is taking this whole acid rain thing a little too seriously.

We rode the skytrain back to Brentwood and stopped at Starbucks for a frapaccino. At this point, Maya is exhausted, and is snuggled quietly in my arms with Curious George, who had, of course, just put out his pipe. A woman in line decided that she would break the universal "don't talk to strangers rule" and reach out and try to touch George and talk to Maya. Maya, being tired and two, pulled George behind her back and said "MY George!" to which Captain Smart-and-Mature grunts "well, SOMEONE is in a bad mood today!" I politely let her know that it's been a long day and she's tired, which Captain Smart-and-Mature understood as "try again, you'll get better results if you push a conversation with a tired toddler". So she made some awful baby talk noises at Maya. Can't blame Maya for grunting at her for that one. The Captain replied "well, I don't like YOU!" and walked away. We just laughed at the Captain. Because really, what else can you do?

Needless to say, we had a fantastic day. In 26 more sleeps, I'll be able to have days like that without having to prep for a TOC.