Our PB&J Adventure Book

A month of firsts
Our March can be summed up into one word: Firsts. Yes, a whole bunch of firsts happened within our March aka Ben's 15 months. Some of the firsts we encountered were good, others bad... but in all the "firsts" have accumulated into another month of memories and joy!

First flu
March kicked off much the way our prior February began, with another trek back to the happiest place on Earth! Since our weekend was short, we decided to fly down from the Bay Area to SoCal, which marked Ben's 3rd airplane trip. Ben is becoming quite the lover of moving objects, be it cars, trains and of course, airplanes. So our little guy was more than excited to be on an actual plane for our trip down!

As a mama and passenger in general, we all know how icky and germy planes can be. One of the first things I do when we sit down on a plane is bust out my anti bacterial wet wipes and scrub down every inch of our seat, table, windows and pretty much any surface Ben might get a hold of. All of that prep though didn't seem to help with whatever might have been in the air, heck it could have even been something before our flight, because our poor little guy ended up catching the FLU!
That's right... Ben caught his first flu. The morning we were supposed to head to Anaheim from my sister's place in L.A, Ben began to throw up. We chalked it up to possibly being something not sitting right in his tummy, so we decided to just rest for the day in our hotel room in Anaheim. Our little guy seemed to perk up a bit that evening, but took a turn for the worse the following day. After getting some air outside of the hotel around Downtown Disney, we noticed Ben looked flushed. Low and behold his temperature skyrocketed to a fever so we rushed him to Urgent Care per advice from our at home on call nurse. Sure enough, the Dr. ran a flu swab on Ben and confirmed that our little guy had the flu.

I've touched upon our flu encounter in another blog post, so if you want to read more about "Getting Sick at Disney" along with our thoughts on battling the flu, read all about that HERE.
Long story short, Ben was protected by his existing flu shot. This meant that even though he caught a strain of the flu, his shot protected him from more serious complications like a hospitalization (or worse). Another plus was because he was diagnosed so early with his flu, he was able to take Tamiflu to help ease his symptoms. This drastically cut down on recovery time, he was feeling back to himself in just a few days as opposed to the 2 weeks it could have dragged on to be.
Overall, we're thankful that we had taken the necessary precautions advised by our Dr. to protect Ben from a worse outcome with his Flu. We're also thankful that our own flu shots kept both PB and I from getting sick as well. If you aren't a believer in flu shots... let me tell you that they work... Fully contagious Ben spent each night breathing next to me while he slept... heck, he even sneezed in my face a few times and this mama escaped without even a sniffle!

When your child gets sick its probably one of the worst feelings in the world. You feel so helpless when they're in pain or discomfort. But I'm thankful our little Ben kicked this flu like the little champ that he is!

First haircut
The weekend after Ben battled the flu and started to feel better, we decided that our family needed to get out and just do something fun. That something fun? Getting Ben his very first haircut! My family has always had a tradition of waiting until after the 1st birthday to give a child their first haircut. With Ben we happily waited to continue this tradition and also because Ben didn't have enough hair to cut until this month, lol! So we took our little guy to a local barber shop, complete with Cars seats and all. Ben was nervous, as were we, but his hair stylist was great and we ended up with the most dapper haircut for our little man. I say little man because this kid seemed to have aged years after getting his new do!

Not a first Disney trip, but a first Disney redo
So remember how I mentioned Ben got the Flu? Well we ended up cutting that Disneyland trip short, ehh, more like it was canceled entirely at the start of March. It was all good though because our main priority was making sure Ben was okay. We agreed that once Ben was 100% again we'd head back to Disneyland for our "redo" trip. This particular trip happened two weeks later and held so much magic and fun in store for our family!

First dad and me day
Everything always happens for a reason and I like to think that things always will work out in the end. Case in point, as sad as it was to cancel our first Disney trip, we were able to come back and redo the trip two weeks later, but that's not the only wonderful turn of events. The most magical opportunity presented itself for this Disney mama with an invite to celebrate the Mary Poppins Returns Blu-ray release at the parks. You can read about that *Practically Perfect* day HERE. While this Disney mama was away at her event, PB and Ben were left ALONE together at the parks for hours. This was huge for our little family since it'd mark the first time Ben and PB would spend this amount of time together without mama AND all while at the happiest place on earth! There was nervousness, anxiety and some fear... but Ben and PB rocked their "dad and me" time together like champs!

First steps
Now here's something that honestly just needed a good dose of Disney magic to happen... Ben's 1st steps! As crazy as it seems, Ben took some of his first wobbly walk steps at Disneyland! It could have been watching all the other kiddos run around and play, it could have been all the distractions, or just plain Disney magic, but whatever it was, we can say that Ben was motivated to walk at Disneyland. Granted, he was still "drunk baby" walking while holding onto our fingers or one hand. But it's leaps (&steps) more than he's ever done while back at home.

So where are we now? As I type this Ben has officially taken a few steps ON HIS OWN!!! YAY! We've always known this little guy could do it, he's got everything he's need to physically, but there was just some kind of mental block up until it just happened at Disney. There aren't enough words to describe the joy, the RELIEF, and the happiness that washes over you as a parent when your child finally achieves that huge new milestone of walking!
This is such an exciting time for us as parents because we're seeing him realize he has a whole new world of possibilities ahead of him. You can just see the wheels turning in his head... and this mama and dada know they our stock in baby proofing just went up tenfold, LOL!

This also goes to show just how flexible those "guidelines" are for our children. You know, those written "supposed to/should be doing" schedules that somewhat get drilled  into your head as a parent. Ben has proven to us that no timeline will ever contain him or his greatness, lol! He likes to roll on his own timing and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Spring forward!!!
We're closing out our March with a whole of of new memories, milestones and most of all: magic! Here's to April and all the new adventures that await! Until next time, thank you for reading! 💜