been soooo bad!

Yeah, I end blog posts with lines like, "more to follow!" then drop off the face of the World Wide Earth for several days. I've probably lost all three of my loyal followers... the ones not related to me ;-)

So, to sum up:

Disney is pretty damn cool when you go with kids. Yeah, I know you beleaguered parents out there are snorting a laugh, saying, "well, she CLEARLY doesn't not have kids." Yes, Parents of Difficult Ones, I see you. I hear you. I am perpetually stuck behind your slow-moving double-wide strollers at every theme park. I know the woe, really I do. I especially see you out-of-town parents, the ones who scrimped and saved for the Great Family Vacation, the ones who push the strollers like deranged holiday shoppers, clenched fists and jaws, determined to HAVE FUN even if the kids are cranky, tired, and hungry. By God, we traveled all this way and spent all this money, so we will have fun and ride every ride, dammit!

Thankfully, I went with Shannon, who may have been pushing a stroller but not slowly, and totally willing to work with her two twin boys who are barely hitting a year old. And we did all the rides that only two little ones can ride on. Let me tell you, going on It's a Small World with adults - you make fun of the animatronic, world-holding-hands glee of it all, you mock the hokey cultural homogeneity, you roll your eyes at every pause and look forward to getting on to things like Space Mountain. But when you climb in that little boat and the two boys are all starry-eyed with wonder, and then they start waving their little arms crazily in some instinctual, herky-jerky toddler dance because they just love the music... your heart just flows over and you can't help but laugh in wonder, and you want to ride that ride all day just to watch them love it. That's what Disney is for.

I will say that while I couldn't stop adoring on them all day, the novelty of The-One-Who-Is-Not-Mommy wore off after about an hour. I spent most of that time holding Matthew, the slightly chubbier of the two munchkins. And you know I'm all about chubby goodness. And he was all about me, kind of, at least until fatigue and hunger set in, and then he was all like, get this crazy lady away from me, I need some Mommy Love. The chubbiness was Denied. Good thing I'm cool like that: I get it, I do. At a year old, I don't think I would want to hang out with The-One-Who-Is-Not-Mommy for very long, either, particularly if my twin brother is hogging Mommy a mere two feet away.

They lasted about four hours, which may not seem like a long time to those of you unaccustomed to the habits of little ones, but it was a heroic feat, believe me. I was proud of them. We drove home with two snoozing munchkins in their car seats. Every now and then, one of them would wake up and cry, and since Shannon was driving, I reached my hand around to hold one of theirs. They're still in the rear-facing car seat age, so they only saw a hand, not whose hand it was... and they'd hold on tight and fall right back asleep, comforted and feeling safe. They had no idea they were holding on to the hand of The-One-Who-Is-Not-Mommy. Hee hee. The-One-Who-Is-Not-Mommy felt pretty good.

And the postlude to that warm, fuzzy moment is not really dramatic or Chicken Soup-ish or even really related to the above anecdote, but maybe just a warm fuzzy all on its own to fill out the week and my tremendous blogging gap. Other than the Munchkin Travels on Wednesday, it hadn't been a great week. In fact, it sucked major butt. There are several reasons for the suckage, reasons I don't feel up to publishing at the moment, except to say that at least none of them involved yet another pregnancy loss, but it still made for a topsy-turvy week, emotionally. So I was looking forward to getting back to Disney today, where reality can sometimes be suspended indefinitely, and spending some time with good friends and family. We rode rides and enjoyed all the wholesome theme park goodness, but the highlight of the night was seeing the Candlelight Processional Show at EPCOT. It's an awesome show: the Christmas story set to some really awesome music, featuring an orchestra (composed of many old friends of mine), a huge choir, and a celebrity guest narrator. Tonight, I heard the awesome Gary Sinise (you know... Lieutenant Dan) read a passage I know and love and have heard so many times. And though parts of the show had to be toned down a bit spiritually - part of that whole cultural homogeneity thing - I was comforted and reminded that the God I know is bigger than any bad circumstance, the God who created me and knows me intimately, came first as the original Cute Munchkin. A munchkin who saved the world.

Wanna know the real meaning of Christmas?