Apples and Oranges

My children think they are Princesses. (Of course they are. We're stating the obvious here.) BigM has known the names of the Disney Princesses for the last 2 years, but she has no idea there are no less than ten movies about said Princesses. Actually, that's not true, she has an inkling.

Last summer we went to the beach with my parents and while LM napped, BigM and I watched Cinderella with G-Pops. She loved it (although she did get a little bored during the middle, but then again, so did I.) So this summer at the beach, we tried The Little Mermaid because at the time, Ariel was her favorite Princess. Maybe you haven't watched it in a while, but within the first four minutes of the movie, Ariel and Flounder get caught up in a high-speed shark chase and when they narrowly escape and finally get home, she gets blessed out by her dad for missing the concert. We turned it off because it was "too scary." I thought I'd have to explain about the Crazy Octopus Lady but we didn't get that far.

Recently, I was channel flipping and saw that Snow White was on ABCFamily, followed immediately by Aladdin (my personal favorite.) I DVRed both of them, so excited because maybe, just maybe, I could get out of one afternoon Dora marathon. A few days ago, we tried Snow White...and guess what. Scary stepmother wants the hunter to kill her beautiful step-daughter, who gets lost in the wood and has to clean (eegads!) a dirty shack. About 20 minutes in, I asked BigM if she was enjoying the movie, she tearfully said, "No way, turn it off!" I asked her what she didn't like about it and she replied, "Those goblins are trying to steal all the crystals." No amount of explaining could convince her that was their job, to mine the diamonds so us April gals could have a little bling. We turned it off and started episode #1,253,425 of Dora.

Everyone says you shouldn't compare your kids, and I think I try really hard not to do that. However, my youngest child is enthralled by anything on t.v. She'll even watch the news, and she's not scared of a thing. A few weeks ago, BigM and I went to run errands, so LM was home with DM. I came home to find them watching King Kong. No kidding. LM sleeps with a stuffed gorilla who we call Junior, and while DM was flipping through the channels and she happened to see ole Kong on the screen and thought it was her buddy come to life. DM said she started crying to watch "Da Dune-yer Show" and wouldn't stop bawling until he let her watch it. So yeah, my two year old watched most of King Kong with her daddy. I don't even let her watch commercials. But as long as no one has nightmares about giant gorillas, I guess that's okay with me.