It's a Small World

Well, we finally got to Disney World. Why, you may ask, is the above picture not of Disney World?

We decided to spend a day and a half after Daddy's water polo tournament with Bradley at Disney World. It started very ominously, at the park entrance for Animal Kingdom with bodyguards for giant stuffed animals telling us that the animals "are with their last family" and blocking Bradley from hugging them.

Later, however, we finally got through stuffed animal security to see Tigger, Pooh Bear and Eeyore --- whom Bradley hugged, then ran away from and hugged again multiple times. Bradley also enjoyed the African drummers and dancers and tried very hard to run onto the stage. Then, Bradley played his own set of drums and muscled a four year old off his drums. The four year old gave a look like "what the hell?" to Bradley's Daddy and ran off like a little sissy-girl. Bradley gave him an extra push for good measure.

Along the way, Bradley learned to say "meow" when we say purple cat and to hug himself when we say "Green Frog." This comes from one of his books -- we grip him and say "ribbit" when it's Green Frog's turn in the book and meow for the Purple Cat.

We woke up super-charged on Monday morning to get the boy to Magic Kingdom. Bradley had a pretty decent meltdown at a restaurant on Sunday for lunch. We thought it was just exhaustion, but when he woke up Monday, he had a fever. So, he spent the one day he was supposed to spend at Magic Kingdom at the doctor's then in the hotel. He has some sort of virus, but came back negative for flu. He positively peed on the nurse and on us, though.

Despite being stuck in a really, really small world (the hotel), the kid could not have been happier. At the hotel, he had big halls to run down screaming (we tried to keep him calm since he's sick, but whatever, you try it), elevator buttons to push, elevators to ride in, room trays to fling at the windows, boxes of cereal to dump on the floor ...... Above, Bradley is running like a blur to the elevators.

And then the trip turned again. Bradley was trying to get up on a hard floor and cracked his head. He was crying, crying, crying. Like he dropped out of the sky, there just happened to be a guy named Neal in the hotel lobby with an accent of some sort who had a harmonica with him. The second he started playing the blues, Bradley calmed down and stopped crying. We had a hoe down in that lobby for a good ten minutes. We let Bradley down and we all (Mommy, Daddy, Neal and Neal's wife) danced while he danced, danced, danced and paid attention to one thing for longer than he usually does.

Of course, eventually Bradley turned away from the harmonica to look for the next adventure, but we were very thankful for the kind harmonica-slanging perfect stranger.

UPDATE: Bradley was robbed of Disney World by a doctor's misdiagnosis of "virus." Bradley has an ear infection which is what we told the doctor we thought it was in the first place. He checked Bradley's ears and said they were clear. Nonsense.