NO LONGER THE CHAMP . . . SIGH . . .

One talent I have always had . . . ALWAYS . . . is that babies LOVE me . . .


Honest . . . I can make ANY baby smile and giggle and coo . . . I am WONDERFUL at it . . .


Except last night . . .


SIGH . . .


I now have to surrender my title as champ of that particular skill set . . .


We went to Disneyland because grampa was going into withdrawals (hahahahahah little inside joke there) . . . Actually we went to Disneyland because this is supposedly the last week of Summer Nightastic or something. Monday through Thursday were unblocked on our passes, and the night we were going to go kept getting bumped around . . . usually at the last minute . . . because things kept cropping up unexpectedly . . . but FINALLY we decided that YESTERDAY (last night, actually) was the day . . . so we packed up and just went (hey . . . who says old people can't be spontaneous) . . .


As expected, Disneyland was PACKED . . . UGH . . . I HATE Disneyland when it is wall-to-wall people like that . . . Still, grampa really really wanted to see the new Fantasmic thingie, so . . . there we were, with roughly half of the planet's population milling around with us. It is no small task to keep track of little ones in a crowd like that, especially when the kids are WAY too big for a stroller (their estimation, not mine . . . strollers make great 'people movers' to work your way through a crowd) . . . Then we staked out our claim for a not totally sucky spot from which to watch The Summer Nightastic show two hours early (and we BARELY were able to still find a spot) . . . and I stayed with the kids to keep our place safe while grampa and mom went off to secure sustenance for hungry/thirsty place holders.


Near as I can figure they were gone for at LEAST eight hours . . . leaving me stranded (if one can be stranded when you are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with all the other sardines) with two HIGHLY energetic, HIGHLY excited children . . . I had ample opportunity to practice not making any eye contact with the people on either side of us so I could pretend I had no idea they were glaring and snarling at us . . . Apparently they had NOT staked out those places so that kids could trip and fall on top of them roughly a thousand times or be right there when a shoving match ensued . . . WEIRD . . . go figure . . .


So FINALLY the production began . . . only to be cancelled over the loudspeakers five minutes or so into it . . . LOL . . . um . . . yeah . . . disappointing. I have never heard anything "BOO"'d quite so loudly and thoroughly at Disneyland before . . . Oh well . . . it is STILL the Magic Kingdom, right? And the kids (and grampa) LOVED that first five minutes AND were absolutely enthralled with the fireworks show later.


However, at one point we split up, with mama going on the rocket ships with both kids, and grampa coaxing me on to a ride I have never been on before, though I am not sure why. The ride was Astro Blasters (or something close to that) and I really have no idea why I have never been before . . . it is not scary . . . nor is it really really jerky like the Indiana Jones ride that always leaves me with weird bruises and whiplash.


So he and I got in line behind a young mother and her baby (and roughly a thousand other people). Like I said, babies AlWAYS love me and respond to me . . . I can always get them to giggle and smile. So about five minutes into our wait, the mom shifted the baby (who was about nine months old) so that he was against her chest, facing backwards (at us) over her shoulder.


He was a seriously cute little guy, with huge eyes and a seriously solemn facial expression that I have only seen duplicated in photos of Winston Churchill . . . so I set about to work my magic . . .


First, I smiled at him . . . NO response . . .


So . . . I made funny faces at him . . . NOTHING . . .


Then I wiggled my fingers at him . . . ZIP . . .


Pretended my fingers were a spider, coming to get him . . . NO response at ALL . . .


I made EVERY funny face I have EVER made at a baby . . . and even made up a few new ones . . . with absolutely NO impact on little stone face . . . NOTHING . . .


I wiggled my tongue at him . . . NADA . . .


I clicked my tongue at him . . . made animal noises . . . with absolutely NO response . . . He just kept STARING at me with these huge eyes, watching my every move intently . . .


Finally, his mom turned around and we began talking, and I confessed that I had been trying for the past hour (yeah . . . the lines were THAT long) to make the little guy crack a smile with NO luck at ALL, and she laughed and said, 'Isn't he the most SERIOUS baby you have ever seen?' Then she went on to say that he COULD smile, but that it was really, really hard to get him to do it . . . and that the walls of their home were covered with pictures of the little guy staring solemnly at the photographer . . . NO photographer had EVER (yet) gotten him to smile . . .


SIGH . . .


Even so, I KEPT trying . . . till I finally got a change of expression from him . . . Not a SMILE, more a wrinkling of his brow like he was seriously disturbed and SOOOOO close to hunting down park security to alert them to this bizarre woman running loose in the park . . .


So I finally admitted defeat and gave up . . .


I am SO crushed . . .


I absolutely FAILED . . . =o/


There go all my cherished dreams of being a baby photographer, if ONLY I could work past my magic touch of ONLY being able to take blurry photographs . . . SIGH . . .


I relinquish my title . . . *I* am not longer the champ . . .