It's like...mandatory, isn't it.

So, when your husband is in med school, and your sole financial responsibility is to try and stay less out of debt, you have to do a lot of improvising. But the other day we did some pretty uncreative improvising. Instead of taking Mia to Disneyland in her "Princess infatuation" years, I took her to.... a Disney show!

I talked it up, and she was pretty excited. She got to go with her best friend Abby, and Abby's mom and I tagged along, too. We plopped the girls in the seats behind the shortest people in the group in front of us, but ended up with them on our laps when the show started. There were dudes in the aisles selling toys that made absolutely no sense: little seizure promoting strobe light wands. I had no idea why the people around us were shelling out $20 dollars for a toy to distract their kid from the show for which they already shelled out $30. And then they spent the rest of the concert trying to get the kid to put the thing away. Why? Because just having the thing in your peripheral vision hurt your eyes, and if looking directly into it for longer than a second didn't cause brain hemorrhaging, it did hypnotize you into buying the other spinning 20 dollar light-up toy.

The show began. A small adult trying to pass off as a little kid came out and flapped her arms to accentuate each syllable as she told the kids she was looking for Mickey Mouse. Mia was... stony. I wasn't too worried. "She'll be excited when she sees Mickey." A few seconds later, out pops the ears. The crowd cheers. I notice I'm cheering more loudly than the kid on my lap. She didn't move for pretty much the whole first half. I tried moving her arms for her. Whispering explanations as to what she was seeing. She was just a little unimpressed stone. "Huh. Maybe she's worried about the very animated actors" who did sometimes look like they were being thrown into epileptic fits by the little seizure promoting strobe light wands out in the audience. Finally some characters she liked came out and she yelled over to Abby, "Look! Tigger!!"

After the intermission, things livened up. Mia's favorites from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse were on, and she was smiling and clapping after the songs. The choreography for her favorite, "Hot Dog Dance" wasn't very well-thought out. They invite everyone in the audience to stand, and, common sense on their side, the parents stand up their kids while remaining seated. Great- now all the kids will enjoy a break from their seats and Bop to the Hot Dog Diddy. Ah- but no- the performers tell the parents to stand, too. So a bunch of grown-ups get to heave their kids up to their head level to see over the other parents holding their kids up to see over the other parents holding their kids up so their kids can see the Hot Dog Dance.

She's mentioned the show a few dozen times since we went Saturday. I'm thinking we've fulfilled our parental Disney duties. For the next few years, anyway.