It's Not A Party Until Someone Loses Some Clothes

Day Two, Animal Kingdom ...

Sadly, there is no giant, glowing castle at Animal Kingdom for parents to prop children in front of for photo ops, but there is a giant, non-glowing tree with animal faces carved into the trunk. Even better! As you can see, Ethan wanted to be fully cooperative and was thrilled to oblige with more photos. I had to explain to him that the child currency exchange rate for a Disney trip is parental permission to snap 85,000 photos, per hour, and that he'd better work at smiling or otherwise looking happy because we were having fun (!) and the pictures had better look like it so we could make other people jealous about how fabulous our trip was when we got home ...

... there, that's more like it ...



... and, that didn't last very long.

Here is the safari ride. During the safari, each time I saw an animal (every three seconds), I would yell out the animal's name and then nudge Ethan with my arm to be sure he was looking at the animal we were both now staring at. I have no idea why I was doing this. Ethan is not vision or hearing impaired, nor does he suffer from some sort of rare disorder which somehow prevents him from recognizing and naming common zoo creatures. I suppose I was attempting to enhance his experience with my own educational narrative since I was a psychology undergrad major, which everyone knows is practically the same exact thing as being a vet.

"Alligators!" {nudge} "Look Ethan, there are ALLIGATORS! See the alligators?" On second thought, those might be crocodiles, in which case, "Crocodiles!" {nudge} ...

"A giraffe!" {nudge} "Look Ethan, there is a GIRAFFE! See the giraffe?"

"Elephants!" {nudge} "Look Ethan, there are ELEPHANTS! See the big elephant and the baby elephant?"

The Nemo show. They prohibited photos, so I only took this one. My friend claimed the show bothered her because "the actors were dressed like giant breasts." Which confused me, because my breasts do not look like fish or coral reefs, but I am not sure if she has something special going on with her anatomy that I lack. I'll reserve judgement, since she is a close friend.

The bridge to Everest. No giant fish breasts to be seen here.

Expedition Everest. Have I mentioned the screaming? See that hill? This ride went backwards, in the pitch dark AND there was a Yeti (a real one! -- see, told you, practically a vet!). The tiny daredevil did not scream once. So I screamed loud enough for both of us.

I even screamed when other people went down the hill. For them, just in case they were too scared to scream for themselves. I know they were grateful, even though nobody explicitly thanked me for helping them out in that way.

Waiting for the first car on Everest, second time around. Do not send me mean messages about forcing my kid to go on a scary ride. He was begging to ride again and is acting for this shot. One hopes that in the future he can get a lucrative job as a giant fish breast in a Nemo show. Anyhow, this is hands-down the most unflattering photo I have seen of myself, possibly ever. But I WAS scared and apparently, rendered super-homely by fear. That's OK, as previously established, Glamour Shots day ended with socks and sandals. Enough said.

After roller coaster riding, a little afternoon cross-dressing to take the edge off.

So, for real, Jeff and Ethan, are we having a super fun time yet or what?



Meet Spotty, our new resident pet house leopard.



On the prowl for the rental car with Spotty and his mean leopard face impersonation.

After Animal Kingdom park, we headed to the Animal Kingdom Lodge (I do love a theme!) and had an amazing dinner at the African restaurant, Jika. Everyone managed to keep their clothes on throughout the meal. After dessert, however, all bets were off.

That is a night vision giraffe. While yelling out random animal names to Ethan, "Zebras! Another giraffe!" {nudge}, I neglected to notice my son's foot was dangling through the bars ...

... so, here we are waiting for the nice animal lady to fetch what she referred to as the "long cage grabbers." In retrospect, we decided it was a bad idea to let him order that second bottle of wine with dinner. Next time, we'll know better. Seven-year-olds these days just can't hold their liquor like they used to.

Ethan was so upset by his wardrobe malfunction that he was unable to have any fun whatsoever for the rest of the trip. See the face of utter worry and despair.

PS Zebras and giraffes do not digest Crocs very well. Lesson learned.