beauty and the beast, a 4 year old's perspective

The other night I watched Beauty and the Beast with my nieces (ages 2 and 4), my mom, and sister.  The 4 year old (M) did not like the Beast. This is understandable: the Beast locks Belle's dad in a dungeon, keeps Belle captive, and yells & grows at her a lot. He is actually pretty scary for much of the movie.  In hindsight, we should have anticipated M not liking him.

What I couldn't have seen coming was M falling for the charms of Gaston.  Bewildered, M asked why Belle didn't want to marry Gaston.  Then, when Gaston rallied the townspeople to attack the Beast, she began cheering, "Yeah! YEAH!!" and raised her arms in exclamation.  And later, while the Beast and Gaston fought, she chanted "NO BEAST! NO BEAST!" At this point, J (the 2 year old) leapt to the Beast's defense yelling "YES BEAST! YES BEAST!" :)

We tried to explain that Gaston was actually the mean one, but M was unconvinced. Hmmm, hopefully this is not an indication of M's future taste in men...

my nieces are delightful, exhibit a

Today, I got to read books and "talk about things" with my 3 (almost 4) year old niece, M.  We read two books: the Cat in the Hat and King and King*. 

At the end of the book M asked me "Why did the two princes get married?" To which I responded that sometimes princesses and princes fall in love and get married, but sometimes princes fall in love with princes, and princesses fall in love with princesses.  Side note: It's really difficult to say the plural of "prince" while also saying the plural of "princess" and have it not all run together. I should have said "boys" and "girls". Oh well, lesson learned.  :)

She seemed satisfied with the answer, and moved on to more pressing issues like: "Why do women have a uterus?"

After a very long talk about things related to the uterus (thankfully her mother fielded most of these questions), she then contemplated if she should have a baby. We told her she didn't need to make any rash decisions. She thought for a moment, and then must have concluded that she needed more information before deciding because she asked that a list of Dr. Seuss books be compiled. Very sensible.

My niece is awesome, by the way**.

* It's an okay book, although not as good as And Tango Makes Three, (M loved this book), which is about two boy penguins falling in love and raising a baby penguin
**I have 4 smart, hilarious, energetic and delightful nieces, they are actually all awesome, not just this one. 

i remember at time...

when "thong" mean "flip-flop."

It was a simpler time.

For a Smurfing Good Time

When Panda and I were little we used to play Smurfs: Rescue in Garagmel's Castle. This was my favorite collecovision game, and one of my top 10video games ever. Others include: tetrus, super mario (the original), bomberman, donkey kong, and a few others. Still, this one holds a special place in my heart. It's smurf-errific!

The object: save Smurfet from Gargamel! One smurf travels across the land encountering fences he must jump over and bats he must duck to avoid. Finally, he makes his way to Gargmel's and jumps up on this - I think it was huge skull guarded by a spider - to to save Smurfet. If he doesn't jump in just the right spot, he dies. If he is successfull, the song "Tis a Gift to be Simple" plays and all is right with the world.

Anyway, I can't find it to play online, which is a shame, but for I did find a game that's pretty smurfy. Play Greedy's Bakery to help Greedy keep his tasty treats from splattering on the floor.

Okay, Fortune, I will do as you ask

My fortune today said “Take a moment to remember 4th grade” so I am going to do just that.

My fourth grade homeroom and language arts teacher was Mrs. Allen. It was her first year as a teacher, and it showed. She wore tri-colored eye shadow that went up to her eyebrows – the three colors were way too dark and she looked like one of those jars made out of multiple colors of sand. In other words – she looked stupid. As you might have surmised, I did not like Mrs. Allen much. She never called on me to read aloud and I attribute my paralyzing fear of speaking up in class to be a direct result of this.

The thing I did like about Mrs. Allen was that she had a “writing workshop,” and we got write stories and books. She would bring in wallpaper samples of all different designs (that were slightly larger than a piece of paper) that we could pick from to make covers for our books. She would then bind them together. It was actually totally awesome. I still have two of my books, one of which was about Rugby, the collie that lived in my old neighborhood who I missed terribly at the time.

I also remember, my social studies teacher. We called him Mr. Z because his last name was really long and began with a Z. On the first day of school, this kid raised his hand and asked, “Can I go to the bathroom.” “Yes,” Mr. Z replied. When the kid got up to go, Mr. Z said, “Sit down.” This went on for a while until the kid finally asked “May I go to the bathroom.” Now, while I’m sure Mr. Z was trying to be funny while teaching proper word usage, all he succeeded in doing was making the whole class think he was an ass and probably prompted that kid to put Mr. Z on the top of a hit list of some sort.

My science teacher was Mrs. Bogosian and she was pretty awesome. I remember we all go certified in First Aid that year and that was exciting! I also went into my second year of violin where we progressed from playing Happy Hoedown to reading notes and playing Ode to Joy. We would continue to play Ode to Joy for many, many years.

My best friends were Jeannie and Mary Beth. Jeannie still lived across the street, and her parents were not yet divorced. We watched Days of our Lives, and her favorite movie was North and South. Our favorite thing to do at recess was sit in the “tunnels” because they were cool, while we waited for an opening on the swing-set. I had a birthday party and we served tacos for dinner.

All in all, I liked 4th grade.