I remember being torn as a kid. I wanted to meet Mickey and Donald, but when it came to actually doing it, I was too scared. I wouldn’t approach them. Nora’s algorithm is like this: step 1: charge at them and give them the biggest hug she can. step 2: act shy. step 3: ask them something.
She asked Belle why she was wearing gloves, for example, and Jasmine (& Aladdin) where the monkey Abu was.
The rain in Orlando this past Saturday broke a 60 year record for single day rainfall accumulation: 6.16 inches! This beat the previous record of 3.29 inches set in 1954. Sunday was similarly wet and stormy with wind gusts up to 70mph. As you might well imagine, we hid from the weather by donning paper-thin plastic ponchos (courtesy of Grandma and Grandpa) and ignoring the weather.
One really hates to encourage the princess thing. The Disney Princesses, as a brand, offer a unidimensional and frankly unimaginative definition of femininity that is somewhere between infuriating and disappointing. I’m deeply conflicted about exposing Nora to this manipulative and stultifying narrative of what it means to be “a girl” –a view in which being pretty is equivalent to being a good person, ugly people are evil people, and one’s wedding day is the goal and the salvation.
Cinderella Castle is sort of the perfect symbol for the Disney Princess brand. It’s beautiful, it impressively manipulates expectations and perceptual illusions to appear whole and substantial, but ultimately it’s completely fake, doesn’t go very deep, and is nowhere near as important as it appears.
At the same time, though, she eats it up. Disney has tapped-into something I can’t quite understand about my own daughter’s psychology and, deep down, that’s probably what really bugs me about it. My role as a dad here is, it seems to me, just like our role with potato chips or television or a thousand other things that are terrible for her but insidiously delicious: expose her to it, give her room to enjoy it, set limits, try to show her how not to be controlled by external things, and trust that she’ll figure it out when she needs to.
Jen and I first visited Animal Kingdom during our honeymoon back when it had *just* opened. At the time it was equal parts not-very-good zoo and not-very-amusing amusement park. It has since gotten vastly better at being both. I spent almost no time during this visit feeling like I was staring at miserable, sweaty animals who wished more than anything they’d decided to go to Epcot or the Magic Kingdom that day. The resident animals seem healthy, the detail and consistency of the theming is nothing short of extraordinary, and “Expedition Everest” is the most surprising, engaging, and entertaining roller coaster I’ve ever ever been on.
Nora had a blast and one of the cool things about this park now is that it’s the only park I’ve ever been to where having a jumbled mass of people wandering around actually reinforces the theme.
The giraffe, smiling, and daredevil pictures come courtesy of Papa’s camera.
This was supposed to be in the Nora and Pooh post earlier. Oops.
Here is a series of videos of Nora meeting Disney characters. As you can see, she was very shy and didn’t enjoy it at all.
Nora and Jen left Houston early Thursday morning to fly to Orlando and meet up with Papa and Baba who flew in from Detroit. I joined them late that night after a day of teaching. Here are some shots they took before I got to town.
Jen: “hey nora, how about if, instead of going to school today, we go get on an airplane and go see Papa and Baba?”
Nora: *thinking* “hrm… what are my friends having for lunch today?”
Me: “arroz con pollo, broccoli and salad”
Nora: “some of those things are not meat.”
Jen: “it’s true, some of those things are not meat.”
Nora: “let’s go see Papa and Baba!”
Me: “how about if we go to Florida to see them?”
Nora: “and Mickey Mouse?”
Jen: “yes, and Mickey mouse.”
Nora: *grinning widely* “okay.”
Here are (from left) Ursula, Nora and Zoe hard at work at their new jobs with Centerpoint Energy (sifting through sandboxes for possible oil sands). It’s a difficult job, but the petroleum industry is important.
We were very excited to learn that our Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum membership could get us into the really quite wonderful Children’s Museum of Houston. There are puzzles, climbing puzzles, a blood-sucking insect display, a recreation of a Mexican village, a large outdoor water play area, a puppet theater, and even a pretend bank where kids can pretend to be the loan officer or the head teller and a bike shop where kids can pretend to be the cashier or a wrench. I couldn’t get Nora to put on the polyester sportcoat that would have made her the loan officer but when I do I swear I’ll post it.
