A Marietta Mama: Las Vegas with a 2 year old

Monday, March 14 evening - Wednesday, March 16 morning

We arrived in Vegas on Monday evening. We didn’t really do too much once we got to our hotel because we were tired from all we had done during the day.

Tuesday morning we got up and headed down to the Vegas strip. What in the world do you do in Vegas with a 2 year old, you ask? Well, definitely not the typical gambling! We did a lot of walking, seeing various exhibits at the hotels/resorts. Everything in Vegas Is over the top (if you’ve been there, you know what I mean!) The MGM hotel has a lion exhibit in their lobby. As some of you know, Jonah has a stuffed lion that he is quite attached to. He sleeps with it every night and often carries it around the apartment when we are at home. We thought because he is so attached to this stuffed lion that he'd enjoy seeing some real, live lions. So, we headed to the MGM resort to check it out. Jonah was a bit scared of the lions. When the trainer would toss a ball the lion would run and chase it… if the ball was in Jonah’s direction and the lion was running in Jonah’s general direction, Jonah would say, “I scared!, Yion Urt me!” We reassured Jonah that there was no way that the lion could get through the glass that separated them. After this reassurance, Jonah seemed much more content and enjoyed watching the lions run around. We walked around and did some more sight-seeing at other resorts… we saw the lobby at the Bellagio, which was amazing! There were live flowers everywhere! For some reason, I didn't really get pictures of it...not sure what I was thinking.

After Jonah’s nap, we headed back out to see a few more sights that were ideal to see at night. We ate dinner at Serendipity 3 on the Vegas strip. this is a restaurant that is quite famous in NYC, but nearly impossible to bring a child to because there is no where to leave a stroller and it is very small. So, I thought we would take advantage of eating there, at a much larger location. After dinner we headed on to see a few sights. The first was a volcano in front of one of the resorts that erupts every hour. We thought that Jonah might enjoy seeing this – um.... we were wrong. Jonah was petrified. He watched intently as the ‘volcano’ began to erupt, but seconds into the show, Jonah freaked out. He was so scared, he was shaking… poor baby. He was saying over and over again, “I scared! Dat urt me!” (That hurt me) The volcano eruption was definitely louder and more intense than we imagined it to be, so we could see why this would scare him. You could even feel the heat coming from the fire that was being shot up out of the volcano. We got him farther away from the action and he calmed down quickly. Next we headed over to see the fountains at the Bellagio. This was probably my favorite part of Vegas. These fountains were quite impressive. They would shoot WAY up high and were choreographed to music. The fountains exhibit played every 15 minutes. Jonah was not interested in the fountains because he was associating it with the volcano we had just watched. He thought it was going to be something scary, and we really couldn’t convince him otherwise. He wasn’t crying or anything, he was just completely content to sit in his stroller and not look at the display. He missed out!!

We stayed in a hotel called Platinum. It was a nice hotel and it was more kid friendly than a lot of the hotels. It wasn't a casino and it wasn't right on the strip. From our room, we could see the strip, which Jonah loved. He could also see the monorail that went through Vegas and he loved watching it. It ran quite frequently, so he was entertained by it.

Wednesday morning, we basically got up and checked out of our hotel to drive to Death Valley, CA.

Below are some various pictures of our day in Vegas....