Oh Boy

It’s always hard to adjust back to regular life after vacation.  Today I had a salad and water for lunch, then I had to chase it with a Diet Coke and Cheetos (and cookies, yikes) in order to avoid shocking my system.  We had a really wonderful trip, and as I always say (except for that one trip with constant thunderstorms), it was one of our best trips ever.  I’m still trying to sort through pictures and organize my thoughts.  But I do have one thing very clear in my head to get the vacation posts started-

Every single day, I think about the ways that my life is different because I have two sons.  I’m not sure how many other mothers do this, maybe it’s because I never imagined that I would have boys.  Maybe one or two mixed in with some girls, but I never imagined being the only female in my house.  I love every minute of it and I wouldn’t change it for a second, but I’m also constantly amused by the impact.  There were a few moments in the trip that made me think, hmm, this is different.

The line to see Mickey and Minnie was right next to the line to see the princesses.  We got to skip a 30 minute wait to meet the princesses, because no one was interested in that.  But we did wait in line –twice- to see-

In the Magic Kingdom, Rush loved the horses, aka the carousel. He was so proud of riding it all by himself, so he and Trent rode a few more times while Tate and I played around by the stroller. After the ride, I whispered to Trent that I was a little appalled that I had to sit on a carousel horse with a brown saddle. Trent was totally confused and I had to spend a lot of time explaining what –to me- is completely obvious. Waiting in line for a carousel is the time when you search for the most beautiful horse, like the horse with big pink roses on the saddle, and then run to claim that horse and spend the ride sitting up straight and smiling at all the peasants adoring you. I gave up the beautiful rosebud horse this time and picked the horses with the most manly saddles for Rush and Tate. After explaining all this, Trent just looked at me and said, “I just sat down on the first horse I saw.”

I can’t comprehend that mindset.

I’m really obsessed with the little girls walking around in their princess dresses at Disney World.  If that had been a thing when I was a little girl, I would have worn my princess dress every single day.  Now there are little princess dresses scattered throughout the park, some with sane, common sense parents (likely Target shoppers) and some who are walking out of the Bibbidi Boppidi Botique.  Disney has set up a boutique where little girls can buy a princess dress and get their hair styled into a bun and put on make-up for TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS.  Do these people not have Targets where they could buy these dresses for $20?  How difficult is it to put on blue eye shadow in the hotel room?  Overall, I love little kids dressing up in costume, live your dreams girls.  But $200 for something so easily accomplished on your own is so overboard that I’m shocked by how many people do it.

In the same spirit of living his dream, Rush brought his Buzz Lightyear Halloween costume on the trip.  The costume had been long forgotten in the bottom of the hamper with all the other “hand wash only” clothes.  We found it about a week before vacation and Rush said he wanted to take it to “show Buzz Lightyear.”  So we packed it, and about 10 minutes before the Pixar parade in Hollywood Studios, Rush put on his costume.

It was a really fabulous, high energy parade, and a lot of the dancers came up to Rush during the parade to say things like, “Hi Buzz!”  It was all very exciting.  The final float in the parade had the Toy Story characters and Buzz Lightyear definitely noticed Rush, pointing to his eyes and then to Rush and waving.  Rush was calm about the whole thing, happily waving, and Trent and I played it cool as well, screaming RUSH RUSH BUZZ LIGHTYEAR SAW YOU HE WAVED AT YOU HE LOVES YOUR COSTUME HE WAVED AT YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Fourteen exclamation points only slightly emphasize our mania.

Rush stayed in costume the rest of the day.  If it becomes a thing to wear Buzz Lightyear or Woody costumes around Disney World, we started that.

We went to the Lego store at Downtown Disney twice. Legos aren’t really a boys only thing, I personally have always enjoyed Legos, but I’m not sure that I would have ever chosen to spend so much time in the Lego store on vacation.  I did pull an unintentional Becky Bloomwood on the way to our second visit to the store, when I justified buying a container of Legos with the phrase, “It’s an investment in our future.”  I’m just really a sucker for anything that you can fill for a set price, like as many Legos as you can fit into a container for $X.  It’s the challenge, plus getting to look at the other shoppers’ containers and think, ha suckers, I fit way more blocks into my cup.

I don’t want to overemphasize gender stereotypes too much because Rush was really excited to see Tinker Bell fly from the castle.  But that’s the only example I can think of that breaks the gender role mold.  Gender stereotypes, you win this time.