Sam and the Princesses

I have a confession to make. I know I said I hadn’t been blogging because I was swimming with Sam, and I know I claimed to have been grading like crazy. And those things are true. But the primary reason I haven’t been online for the last several days is that we were on vacation in Orlando. Yes, that’s right, we did Disney for Sam’s birthday.  And then I’ve spent a week getting caught back up with the paying job, because, well, Scott and I aren’t wealthy enough for me to contemplate the alternative.

We had an awesome time with friends Dennis and Kristi and their kiddos. If you want Disney tips, I suggest looking for the great advice to be found here: http://disneyworldforum.disney.go.com/home.aspx .

For my part, I’d much rather tell you about our vacation.  Naturally, this will take several posts. Today, I want to talk about our favorite moment at the Magic Kingdom, which came late Tuesday afternoon. Thanks to Kristi, we knew that it was impossible to tackle an all-day visit to any of the Disney parks with young children. So we had already spent the morning exhausting ourselves in Tomorrowland and gone back to the hotel for a couple of hours of break. Sam had napped in the car, and I’d stayed out there with him, working on my laptop so he could sleep. He actually only woke up on the return trip to Disney. Now, in the morning, Sam wakes up all noisy and excited. If he’s not easy to be around, it’s largely because he’s so impatient for LIFE to catch up with him. At naptime, in contrast, he wakes up mean.

So he was still a grouch when we caught the tram back to the monorail station. (Any Simpsons fans out there singing the “Monorail” song right now? We did.) He cheered up a little for the actual monorail ride, but went straight back into sulk-mode when he found out Caroline got to pick our first activity. We had FastPass tickets to get autographs from the Princesses and Mickey Mouse. Now, he’s my princess boy. He had been talking nonstop about getting to meet the princesses since before we left for Florida. But at that precise moment, he wanted to ride the train around the park and had no interest in doing anything suggested by big sis.

I told him, “We’re going anyway.”This is the right time for it.”

“Den I won’t wet de pwincesses sign my book.” He really is getting in those r’s and l’s. Except when he’s angry. Then he regresses. And he was absolutely threatening me.

“Sure,” I told him. “It’s your book.” We had gotten both kids autograph books because they’re way into that kind of thing.

“And I won’t take a pictuwe wif dem.” Hmm. More threats I didn’t care about.

“Fine with me. You still have to come along.”

“Weelllllllll…..welllllllll….” Anyone who has spent any time with Sam knows this “well”. It starts as a high pitched yell, and it sounds more like he’s saying “Whale”.  And it never ends happily. But Scott picked him up and tucked him under one arm to forestall the inevitable tantrum until we could get situated in line.

And yes, once we had joined the queue, which was several people long even with our FastPasses, he sat on the floor and tried to scootch away while arguing about what he would and would not permit the princesses to do.  Fortunately, we weren’t waiting long before we reached the throne room, where velvet rope separated the children from Cinderella, Belle, and Aurora.

Sam quieted down, then, after a few contemplative minutes said, “I guess dey can sign my book.”

When we reached the front of the line, Caroline got to meet the crowned heads (they only store three of them there – they hide the others throughout the park, I guess), and she posed beautifully with each of them, first Cinderella,

 

 

 

 

 

                                             then Belle,

                                                                                                   then Aurora. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sam watched Caroline carefully when she went to Cinderella. His eyes had gotten huge, and he was clearly falling in love. But when his turn came, he went and hid his head against the wall, not sullen any longer, but completely shy. We gave his book to Cinderella so he would at least have an autograph. What happened next was magic. Cinderella spent five solid minutes coaxing him away from his hiding place and into her arms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then, she handed him off to Belle.

 

 

 

 

Not to be outdone by Cinderella, Belle first flirted with Sam and then planted a giant lipstick kiss on his cheek before passing him along to Aurora.

Now, Aurora couldn’t hope to top the kiss, but she did flirt and call Sam a prince. She also crouched down on his level (no easy task in a ball gown), saving herself from the distinction of “the princess who was so tall I had to take every picture in ‘portrait’ mode because that crown stuck up too high for ‘landscape’ even when she was sitting”.

As we walked away, Sam abruptly laid down on the carpet, not so much refusing to leave as completely swooning over his loves.

In retrospect, this visit to royalty was not a very good idea. It means I’ve got to hope William and Kate have a daughter and she digs Americans. Because I don’t think my little boy is going to settle for anything less than the real deal.