My little lyricist

"Mommy, can you play 'Saw-na-ga-na' ? " Camille's little voice called out from the backseat on our way to Jazzercise the other day.

"Sawnagana? Sydney, do you know what that is?" I asked, because sometimes Sydney is better at disphering Camille's secret language than I am.

"No" replies Sydney. She is clearly uninterested in helping me because I wouldn't let her go to her friend's house to play.

"MOMMY! PLAY SAWNAGANA!!!" shrieks Camille (many know this tone).

"Sing it for me, Sweetie." I was racking my brain over the play list we had recently been listening to on the iPod.

Before I move along in my story. one thing everyone should know about Camille is that the child can pick up lyrics to a song after only hearing it a handful of times. If she doesn't have the words quite right, she'll at least have the beat down pat. I recently added a couple of Michael Jackson songs to my collection and she already knows most of the words (Smooth Criminal, They Don't Care About Us and Human Nature).

After letting out something like a growl, Camille says "You know! 'Something like a Sawnagana' ".

Instantly I knew what she meant.

Anyone who has ever spent any time at a bar with me past the hour of 10 o'clock knows that the only song I ever want to hear is "Phenomenon" by LL Cool J. In fact, I just requested it with the help of my brother-in-law's girlfriend last weekend at Lord Fletcher's.

Several years back there were a bunch of us girls, who went to a now defunct Uptown bar. The DJ was lofted well above the dance floor, thus making any song request pretty hard. In my infinite wisdom, I mean stupor, I begin to sign "LL" to the DJ. Apparently doing that makes the DJ think you are calling him a loser. So of course, he came down and asked me why I was calling him a loser. After a laugh, I told him that no, I was asking him to play some LL Cool J. He laughed, went back up his tree and actually played a medley of songs. What a nice guy. I sent him a beer for his efforts.

To hear my daughter ask for one of my all time favorite bar songs actually brought a little tear to my eye. Hee hee.

Shark Encounter

The family and I headed to Disney World in June with the girls' dance studio. Our trip down was as awful and complicated as possible (the actual flight wasn't as bad as the hell flight into Mpls in May), but eventually we arrived in Orlando in one piece and with all of our luggage. While at Disney, the company dancers did a showcase of their competition dances on the performing arts stage in Downtown Disney.

As we toured the different parks, Sydney and Camille met every princess and character (except for Daisy Duck) that Disney had to offer. We went to Cinderella's Royal Table for dinner one night and had breakfast with the Princesses (highly recommend the later). We went on every ride the kids desired, and even a few they did not.

Which leads me to a story (and why wouldn't it?).

When I was eight years old or so my family took a vacation to California and we went to Universal Studios (or some place like that). We went on the Jaws ride. You know the one, cute little boat cruising through Nantucket into the mouth of one of the scariest Hollywood creatures ever. So there we are on the boat when I see "the" fin. I buried my head in my dad's lap. He tapped me on the shoulder to tell me Jaws was gone...except Jaws wasn't gone. Jaws was right freaking there, to my right, open jaws and all. I screamed like I had never screamed before. I'm quite sure my dad laughed, if I remember right the whole damn boat laughed.

Fast forward to the middle of June 2009. We are standing at the entrance of Jaws and I am not sure which way to go. Sydney asks "Is this a scary ride?". I said "I don't think so".

I'm now a liar.

Off we trot into the line, my poor kids not knowing what lies in wait. We had spent our day at Universal with another family from the studio so Sydney sat by her friends Emily and Megan in the front row of the ferry. We rounded the bend and there was "the" fin. I felt like I was 8 again. Damn it. Why did I get in this boat? The shark approaches, and Sydney flies around in her seat "YOU LIED!!!". The shark is now at our boat; mouth open. Kids are screaming, Camille has buried herself in my lap, I want to scream, but can't. The shark has pushed so much water into our boat that we are all soaked (we had seriously just dried out from a water ride earlier in the day). We float on through two more shark encounters, a couple of gun shots, and more screams from our kids.


Maybe I've started what will become a family tradition of torture on the "Jaws" ride, but only time will tell.