Friday, April 22, 2011

Sleeping Beauty, Harris Style

Sometimes I wonder if I'm warping my children. First, a little brief background for you newbies--I have 4-year-old identical twins. Their initials are L and R, and I call them Left and Right because that's how we know which is which in early pictures of them. Coincidentally, our son's name starts with C, and he goes in the center, but we can usually tell which one is him, because we're smart like that.

Anyway. Last night, Right was playing with a Sleeping Beauty doll, and I got out a grasshopper finger puppet and waved it around saying, "I'm hungry! I'm hungry! I need a princess to eat!"

And she replies in her high-pitched mock princess voice, "Noooo! Noooo! Don't eat me! I'm so beautiful!"

Ahem. Sorry, kid. That doesn't fly in the Harris household. I calmly explained to her that brains will get you out of any situation, including attack by giant grasshopper, better than beauty will any time. And then we came up with a plot to distract the giant grasshopper by feeding it lots of lettuce. It was all going great until she decided to have Sleeping Beauty chop its head off.

Walt Disney might not have gone for that, but I'm kinda proud.

7 comments:

Artemis Grey said...

Chopping off the giant grasshopper's head! My hero! Ahem, heroine! So freaking cute. And I love the Left Right Center thing. I'm an identical twin myself and we did the same thing. Even at thirty I have to go to my mom and ask who is who in the old pictures because usually my sister and I can't pick ourselves out.

storyqueen said...

Way to go, Sleeping Beauty! I mean, distraction can really only get you so far....

Vikki said...

Wow, your daughter's sleeping beauty has ninja moves. Nice!

My nieces are always playing "princess in distress" games. Last Sunday I tried to point out that just because they have "long, wonderful hair" and are the "most beautiful-est princesses in all of the whole entire big world", they can still outsmart the evil dragon/overlord/one eyed giant frog without the prince coming to rescue them. They looked at me like I'd just announced I had Barbies flying out of my butt. Guess the whole "brains over beauty" thing doesn't come up much in their house. :)

Unknown said...

I always suspected lettuce could get one out of a crisis. Great story! ;)

Anonymous said...

What is it about age four? My daughter is suddenly aware of beauty too - is she beautiful, are her dolls beautiful, is the princess beautiful.

We talk a lot about warrior princesses in my house - be they beautiful or not.

Unknown said...

I would love to be your kid. You teach originality, take that Disney.

Carrie Harris said...

I think we should start a princess grasshopper beheading club, guys.