Sep 19 2010
The YearOne Princess
The YearOne Team 2010-2011
Last year our YearOne interns referred to Annada as their mascot. This year, with 7 women interning, Annada is more of a princess. She gets picked up, played with and generally steals the spotlight.
Annada knows she’s the princess too: At Marc’s birthday party we were all standing in a circle. Annada began going around the circle dancing on “her stage.” And at Disney last Friday, she picked a random college-aged girl and crawled up into her arms. As I came to rescue the startled girl, Annada gave me a big grin that said, “What’s wrong mom? All 20-somethings adore me.”
Learning to surf.
Annada is always listening. Somehow she picked up why we went to the beach a few weeks ago. As she exited the car she began singing, “Gospel at God’s pool, gospel at God’s pool.”
Princess Touch Hand
Part of YearOne is serving Disney by being a spiritual resource for their interns. We go each Friday and have a great time getting to know people from all over the world. It is amazing to see how God is moving among the 5,000 interns at WDW.
It always takes me a least a day to recover from each day out at Epcot. Even so, with Annada in tow I’m not able to keep up with the group. Last Friday my group set out to visit 3 countries before breaking for lunch around 2. I decided dragging a hot and hungry toddler to each place wasn’t going help anyone. So after Mexico I told the group I was going to feed Annada lunch and catch up with them in Morocco.
On the way to Morocco we saw Snow White. Last year Annada had an unfortunate early experience with Stitch trying to sneak up and kiss her eat her head and Annada decided all the characters were evil, toddler gobbling monsters to scream at.
I thought Snow White might be a good warm up character, so I paused about 20 feet away and let Annada look at her. I told her she was a princess and she was nice (meaning: won’t eat you so there is no need to scream). When I started to walk away Annada surprised me by begging, “More princess please! More princess please!”
I decided this seemed like a good time to retry the character thing (because having a child that screams every time they see Mickey Mouse is a downer to conversation at WDW). We waited in line and Annada seemed so happy to get closer and closer to the princess.
Until it was our turn. At which point her old Stitch memories must have resurfaced, because Annada began digging her nails deeper and deeper into my skin as she moved her body as far away from Snow White as possible without letting go of me. Snow White, a consummate professional, pretended not to notice that Annada was acting like she had ebola. She walked to the side away from Annada and spoke softly while posing for the picture.
Then, as if approaching a scared bird, she reached out her hand and held it steadily toward Annada. “Would you like to hold my hand?” she asked.
Annada didn’t let go of her death grip on my arm, but she didn’t cry either. So Snow White gently pressed her fingers on Annada’s, blew her a kiss and was off to take more pictures.
I suspected that as soon as Snow White was far enough away for Annada be able to breathe again, Annada would begin reproaching me, “no princess! no princess!”
But instead she reached out her hand in awe. “Princess touch hand!” she gasped.
She held her hand out, staring at it, for a good 5 minutes (which is like 10 years in toddlertime) whispering, “Princess touch hand. Mommy, princess touch hand!”