The Disney Effect

Because I just cannot do it all (at least during this season of our lives), Elsa has been watching a decent amount of television lately, and has been introduced to several of the Disney movies, including her two new favorites, Finding Nemo and The Lion King. This past weekend, she decided she needed to "dress like a diver." Lucky for her, both her mommy and daddy used to scuba dive (Jarrett way more, and way more officially than me), and we still have all of our gear. So Elsa spent most of the two days begging to watch Nemo and donning Daddy's scuba mask and snorkel while watching the diver scene. She used to be a little frightened of just this one scene, but, since dressing up, seems completely okay with Mr. Diver. She was a little sad to find out we do not own a "diver suit," though. Today we went to the aquarium with Kate and James, and she was super excited to see divers in one of the tanks, as well as Dory and Nemo and his daddy in two other tanks. Prior to this visit, she was not really familiar with Finding Nemo, so this brought a whole new perspective to the aquarium. And, quite honestly, she seemed even more interested in all of the fish, and wanted to spend a fair amount of time at the tanks, actually watching the fish, and she wanted to revisit some of them several times over. This was Avie's second time at the aquarium, and she was also very interested in watching the sea creatures swim by in front of her.

And her Lion King dramatic debut involves acting out the scene where the monkey presents the lion cub to the rest of the safari animals. This completely cracks me up, as she seems so serious about the whole ordeal. And this might be common among children, as I remember my friend, Shelly, telling me that her son, Christian, did this exact thing with his baby doll. Elsa started out using her baby doll, but then discovered she had a stuffed lion cub, which she was greatly excited about. This has always been one of my favorite Disney movie scenes, and I think it just proves its dramatic effect on its audience.