Today and yesterday, we finally introduced Teagan to Disney. Well, to movies other than “Cloudy, With A Chance of Meatballs.” She’s probably been passively aware of the Princesses, (a pair of Princess underwear magically appeared in her drawer, and has a Sleeping Beauty dress-up), and other things Disney, she did get Fillmore’s Tent for her birthday. (It’s a conspiracy man!) Up until now, we’ve never really watched anything Disney.
We started with “Sleeping Beauty.” I talked it up over breakfast. How it was one of my favorites, with music from and inspired by Tchaikovsky. For giggles, we made her say Tchaikovsky a few times. She got pretty close, once. The credits confused her, she wanted the movie to start. I explained that it gave a brief sampling of the music in the movie, and that seemed to satisfy her. A little.
She was fascinated. Glued to the tv. Well, at least for the first bit, then, for her, it got a little slow and her attention lagged. Too bad there wasn’t more bunnies in boots and owls in hats. She wasn’t scared of Maleficent in the beginning. It was the creepy castle and the Forbidden Mountain that scared her, a little. Oh, and Maleficent turning into a mean dragon. She loved how the dress went from pink to blue back to pink.
That was “Pink Dress, Blue Dress” for most of yesterday, until she started calling it “Sleeping Booty.”
Then we watched “Beauty & the Beast.” This one totally drew her in. She stood in front of the tv, open mouthed, for what seemed like half of the movie, which incidentally is about the length of her attention span. There is more singing and music in that. The wolves and Beast scared her a lot, she would snuggle up to either me or Stu until they were gone. After a bit, Beast stopped frightening her, she saw him becoming the man who would break the Enchantress’ curse. She asked to watch this immediately after finishing it the first time. It was “Pink Dress, no, Yellow Dress” for a short while, until it became “Beast & Booty” or “Beast & Belle.”
Trying to avoid bedtime, she asked for both movies.
Today was “Winnie the Pooh” and then “Peter Pan.” Pooh, she calls “Windely Pooh,” and she wasn’t overly impressed, but that could have been her attention span. She wanted to go swing and slide. “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” did pull her in, she thought it was pretty cool, and attempted to sing along to Little Black Rain Cloud.
After “Windely Pooh,” I tried Peter Pan, the first half of which was a hit. She loved Tinkerbell and her “glitter like stars” that made the children fly. The mermaids and indians? Eh, they were pretty neat, but Michael has a teddy bear just like her. As she started to loose interest and build her pillow “fight,” (it’s really a fort, but she doesn’t believe us), and generally make a big mess, she declared “I Peter Pan!”
After dinner tonight, she asked to watch “Beast and Bell” and as the wolves came on, she said she was scared. I asked if she wanted to fast forward, and she did. ”Daddy forward please!”
I would have tried “Cinderella” or “Little Mermaid,” but never upgraded my old VHS versions to DVD. And the VHS are at my parents house. Now that she’s able to watch about half a movie without losing interest, I’ll have to get the DVD versions.
I don’t know if she needs to be aware of Princesses yet, or any of it, but I enjoy the movies, and I enjoy watching her watch them. I’ll need to counter all the help-me-I-need-a-prince-to save-me with some self-sufficiency and fencing lessons.
OMG. It’s here.
