New York City | Lessons from my daughter

Here is the thing with Emily, if she is part of the planning and knows what is going to happen… the experience will be better for all involved

We’ve traveled by car quite a bit in her younger years and we moved 3 times so we knew we could do this if planned well…

Our first “plane” trip was in January 2009! Emily was 9 and a half and we went to Disney in Florida. We only had 1 surprise for her (a princess make-over), everything else she knew about.

Isn’s this picture amazing???

We explained the airport, the security, she helped pick the hotel, I got a book about the parks and we added a day trip to Sea World!

She did so well…

We had planned for meltdowns and tantrums but we got none!

Yeah for Emily 🙂

She knew how many days we were going to be there and we had a daily countdown. On the way back, the Disney bus driver ask her if she was sad to go home and she said… “No, I’m ready to go home!” She was exhausted and happy!

Yeah for us!!!

One day, I will tell you all about that trip!

Since Disney, we’ve travelled to Boston, Dallas, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Bermuda and now we are planning a trip to New York City for this summer!

Every single one of those trips could get one or more posts on there own! I will get to that I some point…

We’ve only traveled without Emily once and that was a lot of planning! This will be worth a post as well!!!

It’s much easier to travel with Emily than without her.

So, New York City…..

We’ve been planning this for at least 6 months now. We are going to a conference for Emily’s syndrome – the 5P- society for the cri du chat syndrome!!! She calls it her conference, she had me read her the brochure and even made her own brochure to present her class… We will finally meet others with Emily’s syndrome! That will be a first for us!

We are adding 5 days before the conference to spend time in NYC on our own!

Emily has made a list of what she wants to do!

1. See the Statue of Liberty. No need to go in, which works perfectly as I am not sure if it’s open yet and I didn’t really want to spend that much time in there anyway…. It’s amazing how things work out sometimes!

2. Top of the Empire state building

3. Central Park Zoo…. you know to see the Madagascar animals. 🙂

4. The Grand Central Terminal… from Madagascar and Arthur

5. FAO Schwartz… for the piano in the Big movie

6. We need to go look at Madison Square Garden… after all, Justin Bieber was there!

….

But before any of that can happen, we need to go to the American Girl Doll store!!!

So, on the Saturday, we should be in NYC around 11am. Our hotel room won’t be ready… so we will leave our suitcases at The Barclay (Intercontinental)… and walk down to the American Girl Doll store. Emily has looked at the floor plan and has picked her next doll, she wants to go to their photo studio and we have reservation for afternoon tea.

The new doll will be named Madison… as a reference to point #6 above!

Emily already has 11 of those dolls…. I know, you are judging us right now…. Who would buy that many American girl dolls…?

I am judging myself too!

The thing is, I blame Lorraine for all of this but that is also a story for another time…

Emily is 15 and plays with her dolls, she remembers their birthdays and takes care of them. She will most likely have them forever and plays with them for years to come…! It’s a long term investment. We didn’t buy them all, some she bought with her own money and some were gifts from her grandparents…

Back to NYC!

First stop, the AGD store than to our room to play dolls! On the Sunday, we move to the hotel I wanted to stay at but was full on Saturday!!! We are going to stay at The Plaza, a Fairmont Hotel for 4 nights!!! We will feel like royalty!

Home Alone, Eloise and so many other movies and tv shows have showed us the Plaza over the years… this is really exciting.

We will have Dim Sum at some point – if any of you reading this live in NYC and would like to recommend a place, please do so! I am still trying to decide where to book!

We will go to a Broadway show. I am thinking the Lion king!

We will do a boat tour and a bus tour!

We have to go to a least 1 museum… Emily loves painting so the Met, MOMA or the Guggenheim…

And of course Time Square!

…

Emily knows everything we will be doing while in NYC, she is excited about the trip!

She travels like a pro and can handle airport security really easily. She gets ready faster than most of those “world travellers” complaining about how slow the security lines are only to slow them down too…

Don’t you love these???

Emily has stayed at 4 and 5 star hotels on multiple occasions and eats in fine dinning restaurant as easily as she eats at diner!!! It’s amazing how by exposing her to travels, cities, art, food and nice hotels, … she developed a taste for it!!!

She expects doorman to open the car door and she puts the napkins on her knee when she sits down for a meal…

We’ve created a really well mannered monster!

🙂

I know, one day that will bit me back in the …. bottom but I am enjoying this!

How do you plan your travels with your kids?

A month ago, I shared the Cri du chat awareness video with Emily’s resource teacher.

Emily appears in this video 4 times which, to her, is the equivalent of being a movie star!

……

Since she was little, I have allowed Emily to make her own decisions. I have allowed her to fall, to get hurt sometimes, to taste vinegar and lemon juice….. but most importantly, I have allowed her to learn how to make a decision!

Within a couple of days of us having the awareness video, she told me she wanted to present it to her class….

Wow!!!

I didn’t see that one coming.

Emily knows she has a rare syndrome, she knows she is different and she knows that different is awesome because normal is boring!!! 🙂

Sometimes, she is sad about being different… she wants friends and a boyfriend but quickly she’s back being her happy self…

Emily, to my knowledge, has never talked about her syndrome at school.

Where we live, kids with special needs are included in regular class. This means Emily is in a regular 8th grade class… the kids obviously know she is different but I have no idea if they know how much she’s achieved in her life.

Around the same time as Emily decided she wanted to share the video with her class, she was assigned an ELA (English Language Art) project and decided to make it about her syndrome. She decided to make a brochure about the 2013 conference in New York City. We printed all the materials that was available to us and sent it to school with her. She worked with her EA (Educational Assistant) on building a brochure.

Yesterday, there was a note in Emily’s communication book, her presentation date is June 12th 8:30am and she will introduce the awareness video before talking about her diagnosis and her upcoming trip to NYC, including the conference!

I am so nervous right now!

I will be there, I will try to the best of my abilities to make a video of Emily standing in front of her classmates and talk about herself, her syndrome, her reality!!!

I will be there for her if she gets questions that she can’t handle… I will be there for her regardless of how it goes…

Remember my public speaking post…..? How scared I was…. this tops it! This is beyond anything I ever though I would see one day! Between now and June 12th at 8:30am… I have to reach into my drama class experience once again and act as if everything is fine…. as if I am not nervous about this new adventure…

I am not afraid that she will not do well, I am worried about her classmates reactions…

Please send positive energy our way so those 14 year old react like friends to Emily’s efforts and achievements…

Would let your child open up like that to their classmates?