A word about Danny

I have more Disneyworld pictures to post, but before I do, I want to share a little bit about Danny. He was born in Virginia just before we moved, and has spent 27 of his 28 months of life in Michigan. This means that most of our family and friends who live far away have seen him only a handful of times-- not enough! He is such a wonderful part of our family, and I wish more people could get to know this guy in the middle of his terrible terrific two's.

Bowman and I joke that Danny as a 2-year-old only shows his emotions in two ways: happy and mad. Thankfully he is happy 90% of the time. Now that he is talking more, he loves to tell jokes (which by themselves are not funny, but with his dramatic vocal inflections are hilarious). Every joke ends with him asking, "That funny Mom?!" He loves pretending to be a dog, and shouts at the top of his lungs, "I'M SPIKE!!!" every time he does. He also love to "sing" his favorite songs, and by sing, I mean that he likes someone else to do the singing, while he shouts in the words he likes at the ends of the phrases.

When he is mad, there is no mistaking it. You'll know (and so will everyone within hearing distance). Unfortunately, I have not as yet figured out what triggers his meltdowns. Some days it's because I tried to help him dry off his wet hands. Other days it's because I did not offer to dry them off for him soon enough.

But like I said, he spends most of the day being happy and hilarious. Lately he's become extremely detail-oriented. This has manifested itself in his creation of lines. Examples from the last 7 days:

He is meticulous about his object placement. If anyone moves his things before he's finished with them... cue the meltdown. Rayna made the mistake of moving one of the mixing bowls (in the second picture up there). Danny spent the next 10 minutes crying while adjusting every bowl a half-inch to the right or to the left until the universe had again reached equilibrium.

While his preferences can be maddening, I love that he has passion in his life. He knows what he likes (his Cars t-shirt, pictures of dogs) and what he doesn't like (all of his clothes except that t-shirt, real-live dogs). He and Rayna are great friends and love playing together. We all love Danny so much!

Florida trip

We escaped to Florida for a week, and loved it! I am still gathering pictures from the various phones and cameras we used, but here are some for now.

We spent our first full day there at Cocoa Beach. It was so fun to be playing on the warm sand when we had been freezing at home only two days before!

We got back to our hotel that night totally exhausted and ready for some good sleep, in a bed... full of ants. Ackkk! Grandma and Rayna  turned down their covers that night to find ants! Everywhere! You can imagine how disgusted we were. We found an old candy wrapper underneath the bed, which must have been the source. Needless to say, we got a new, ant-free room. (P.S. I don't want to bash too hard on Marriott. They took care of the problem and gave us a refund, and a few free nights' stay for the future.)

Our great friends Hannah and Garett were so nice to share their Disneyworld guest passes with us, so we got to visit the parks! We spent the first day in Magic Kingdom.

 

They kids loved It's a Small World so much! Rayna watched with her mouth open the whole time, and Danny waved to every doll for the entire ride. It was hilarious and so adorable.

Rapunzel got to meet her twin! This was the highlight of Rayna's day.

 Danny was too shy to get close to the pretty girls. :)

Dumbo was a favorite, of course. 

Danny may have been shy around the princesses, but he ran straight into Goofy's and Donald Duck's arms.

Both kids crashed around 9:00 that night. But they woke up an hour later, so we decided to squeeze in a few more rides! Poor Rayna, her face is hilarious here. Soo tired!

We attempted to let Danny drive... Sort of tough when you can't see over the steering wheel.

This was the view from our room in hotel #2. Beautiful! We loved those pools.

The kids were so excited to swim with their new lifejackets.

Grandma was the best teacher! She taught Danny to swim around all by himself! He and Rayna were basically fish after this.

Danny adopted this decorative pillow from our room. He carried it around everywhere, slept with it, and insisted that his diaper be changed only while he was resting his head on it.

Rayna did her fair share of relaxing on the ground too. Strange kids. :)

We spent a day at Animal Kingdom on Wednesday while Bowman was working. The kids were super excited for the 3D Bugs' Life movie. We ended up sitting right next to the huge animatronic Hopper, which was not our best choice, but oh well. My kids were doomed to inherit my issues with grasshoppers anyway.

We went on a walking tour and saw tons of awesome animals! Danny has brought up these bats in conversation pretty much every day since we saw them.

  

The tigers were out and about!

Tiger-watching.

There was also a petting zoo, which was both wonderful and terrifying for these guys.

Keeping a safe distance...

We saw Rafiki...

Both sides.

Hands-down our favorite part: the safari! All of the animals were out, and the kids saw everything! Okapis...

Hippos...

Crocodiles...

We had to wait for almost 20 minutes for a giraffe to get out of the road ahead of us.

  

The giraffes were so close!

Second to the safari was Dinoland. Both kids ran around, sliding and climbing, and having the time of their lives.

The next day was Epcot.

We were so excited to see the Frozen princesses! ...Until we found out we had a 4-hour wait. No thanks! We followed the line into the shop where they were. Both kids were happy to see them, and then move on.

Both kids had fun on the ride with Figment, and made their own Figments of their imaginations.

They loved this sound floor. Every square made the sound of a different musical instrument. Danny burned about 2000 calories here. He moved around by hopping only, for about 20 minutes.

The Nemo ride was also a huge hit.

Danny conked out on the Spaceship Earth ride (inside the giant Epcot ball).

At the end of the day we were starving. It took about 10 minutes to wait in line for our food, and both kids took advantage of the time to practice their best meltdown techniques. Their skills are impressive. But the sobs turned to squeals of delight when they found out their meal included chocolate milk and pizza sauce.

Danny's got no time to be smiling for pictures when food is available.

Bowman finished his work week, so we went back to Epcot the next day so he could see it. We used his phone to take most of the pictures that day. I haven't gotten them off yet, so I only have a few! I'll add them later.

Danny had plenty of sleep to catch up on after his many late nights.

 We all loved the turkey legs, but Rayna devoured them like no one else.

Before we left for the night, we made one last stop in the Magic Kingdom to say goodbye to our friends, and to visit our favorite ride one more time. Dumbo!