As I tend to be rather reminiscent as of late I started thinking about past trips to theme parks with Lauren as she was growing up. When Lauren was born my middle sister Beth lived in Los Angeles and worked for the post production accounting division at Disney Films. With this position came several perks including free admission to any Disney parks along with two additional guests. Needless to say we visited Orlando every time Beth came home.
We decided to treat Lauren to something special for her 4th birthday. One of the restaurants in Epcot features a breakfast with the Disney characters. You eat your meal as the characters walk around and visit the tables. Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Donald....they were all there. Lauren was having a ball. All until one set of characters came to say "Howdy".
Chip 'n' Dale were making their rounds and approached our table. Lauren was excited at first but then all of a sudden started acting strangely. She pulled away and attempted to crawl to the other side of me in the booth. Beth and I couldn't figure out why but Lauren was deathly afraid of Dale. Chip was fine but Dale....no go, she wasn't having it.
During a subsequent visit to the Magic Kingdom we again encountered Chip 'n' Dale conducting a meet and greet and again Lauren was friendly with Chip but wanted nothing to do with Dale. To this day I am not quite sure what her issue was with this nice furry fella. I can only speculate that maybe it was the red nose that threw her for a loop. She must have surmised that chipmunks have black noses like Chip and this red nosed variation didn't sit well with her. Or perhaps she was not a fan of big protruding buck teeth. We teased her about this as she got older and she never could really tell us what all the fuss was about. Crazy kid.
Beth and I also took a trip to Sea World when Lauren was just a toddler. She was so young in fact that a stroller was still her main mode of transportation. She became attached to the park map and refused to give it up on several occasions. We ended up getting another map from a mid park kiosk just so we could plot the course for the day. What a little bossy britches.
Ray and I were fortunate to be able to take the kids (Donnie, Lauren and Lauren) to several water parks over the years also. The kids loved the rides and I tolerated spending the entire day in my bathing suit. All in the spirit of family fun right? Again, one of Lauren's classic word mix ups comes to my memory as a result of thinking back to these trips.
She had finally gathered up all of her courage and decided to ride the extraordinarily tall water slide near the entrance of Wild Waters, a park in Ocala we frequented. She climbed stair after stair and finally arrived at the top. I peered up with my hand splayed across my forehead to shield my eyes from the bright sun. When I saw she had reached the front of the line I waved enthusiastically from my safe location with my feet planted firmly on the ground in an attempt to celebrate her for taking this big step of bravery. She climbed over the edge of the top of the slide and sat in the designated spot with jets shooting water behind her little bottom ready to propel her down this steep slippery slide into the pool of water below.
The lifeguard gave her the signal and she scooted forward a bit and then....woosh, she was off. She laid back as instructed and crossed her legs at the ankles and her arms were crossed over her chest. She didn't even scream. Then she plunged feet first into the pool totally immersing her body under the water. She sprung up and waded to the ladder located at the edge of one side of the pool. She was so excited as she ran over to where I was eagerly awaiting her arrival and I could hardly wait to commend her for a job well done. "Did you have fun?" I inquired. "Yes mommy...it was awesome." I was so proud of her.
Then she loudly announced "But it totally gave me a pudgy!" What?? "You know, I had to pull my bathing suit out of my butt cuz it was stuck up there." "Uhhhhh....you mean wedgy?" The wordsmith strikes again!
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