Vegas, Grand Canyon and California Trip

Vegas and California was our most awaited trip, we had been planning for it since long and finally we decided to go for it during Sept long weekend this year. None of these places were meant for Ishaan to enjoy but we planned it in a way so that Ishaan has at least one activity to look forward to everyday.

Ishaan hardly knew much about this trip in advance all we told him is we are going to Vegas and you will meet your new friend Aryan there, all your old friends will stay back and only you will go for vacation this time. He was surprised and asked me a couple of times why are others not coming in for this vacation.

Before we reached the re he was excited to meet Aryan and asked me
several times when will Aryan come, finally they met and became best friends in next 5 mins (they were meeting for the first time). Ishaan wanted to eat, sit, play do everything he can with Aryan and when asked about who is your best friends his answer was Aryan, and what about others Rishaab, Anshi, Adu ... he said But they are not here. So I rephrased the definition of a best friend "A person who is currently available to play with you is called a Best Friend".

At Grand Canyon it was more of a view of the valley from different angles and Ishaan was little bored of watching the same view, I tried showing him the valley and the river a couple of times and thats all it was for a little brain like him, he might be thinking "yes thats good so what but where are the slides". He enjoyed the early morning walk where we went to find birds and take picture.


Once we were back to Vegas the first place we visited was Casino Circus Circus which had a big Adventuredome for kids to play in, I checked the height restrictions and found he could do at least 5 rides and watch a 4D show which was good enough. He did all those rides and was scared in a couple of them, but overall it was fun for him. He played guitar, won a stuffed Giraffe, in one of the games, although he was unable to decide on what he should name it and kept calling it by multiple names.
Las Vegas Strip was a lot of walk for his tiny feets but we always encourage him walking rather than one of us carrying him, I would say he did a great job and managed to walk around and see almost all the casinos on the strip, without using a stroller. when we passed though those Casinos Ishaan was excited to see the colorful slot machines and wanted to play on them, he would run and sit on them whenever he would get a chance initially but after explaining him a couple of times he got it that he is too young to play on those games. His best comment that I remember was at the hotel room, he got a couple of coins that fell from my wallet, he told me "Daddy I have coins now, I will keep them in my pocket can we use them to play when we go down now", this was a good reply to our excuse that we cant play on machines because we don't have coins.

His next excitement was M&M store he asked for it every time we passed through the store but that was planned for day 3, it was a 4 level M&M Store at Strip. He was very happy to be there and picked up a lot of M&Ms and had some great pictures with the characters.
Ishaan also visited an aquarium on Day 4 and saw various colorful fishes and the diver feeding them, he was not able to find his favorite Nemo in that aquarium.

After Vegas we went to LA where Ishaan met his new friend Aayush, he was little confused to meet him and asked me if Aayush is a girl or a boy because he remembers Aayushi his friend who is a girl then how is Aayush a boy but that didn't bother him for long and soon we found him busy playing with Aayush's toys.
Next day we visited San Diego and plan was to visit Legoland, it was a big park and Ishaan was very excited about it. We were little late to reach there and got only 3 hours at the park but somehow managed to cover most of rides. I was happy to see Ishaan doing the big roller coaster ride, the best part of this park was I was allowed to be with Ishaan for all his rides, that way he was not very scared. He was happy after doing the big roller coast ride just because I was with him and holding him tight during the ride, that makes me think of the kind of comfort and security a father or a parent can give to his child, I never thought he would do that ride but just thought to give it a try and later it became an achievement for him.

At San Diego we stayed at Aryan's house and later Aayush also joined us for our visit to San Diego beaches, cliff and Island. All 3 kids had a lot of fun playing with each other and posing for pictures. Later in the evening after Ishaan happily said good bye to both of his friends and asked them to come to his house. In the flight Ishaan kept asking us questions like where are we going, why are we going back to home, why is the vacation over and we never had answers to these questions because even we were thinking "Why does a vacation gets over".