Fractured Fairy Tales

Peeper's been playing Rapunzel a lot lately. Here she is in her tower, with her long hair. (Formerly known as a sofa table and a bathrobe belt.)

As you can see, the Prince has climbed up to the tower.

We've been reenacting the whole story, with me assisting the Nutcracker in his role as the Prince, and Sock Monkey in his (her?) role as the Witch.

In the version of the story that we checked out from the library, Rapunzel and the prince have a do-it-yourself wedding right there in the tower, and later the Witch busts them, cuts her hair and banishes her to the desert when she "realizes what Rapunzel does not" - that she's pregnant.

By the time the prince "wretched and blind" stumbles upon Rapunzel and she restores his eyesight with her tears, she has given birth to twins - a boy and a girl.

So, in our little performance, when  the prince's vision returns,  he looks around and says, "Hey, where did those babies come from?!"

To which "Rapunzel" replies, "Fum my utewus!"

---

When I noticed that Peeper had done this:

of course, I had to tell her about The Princess and the Pea.

It's been a while since I've read that one, so I wung it.

Once upon a time, there was a King and Queen who had a son, who had just become old enough to marry. The law said that he had to marry a princess, so they sent a message to all the surrounding kingdoms letting the princess know that their son was looking for a wife. Many different princesses came to meet him.  

First he went out with one princess, but he came home and told his parents, "I don't want to marry her. All she talked about was how pretty she was. 'I'm so pretty, blah, blah, blah.' Yuk." 

Then he went out with another princess, and he came home and told his parents, "I definitely don't want to marry her, because she was mean. All she did was talk bad about the other princesses. 'This one has big feet, and that one has funny looking elbows, and the other one has a weird-shaped bellybutton.' I don't want to be married to a mean princess!" 

[Of course, from this, Peeper gets: "He said, 'Mom, Dad, I don't want to marry that princess, cause she has funny looking elbows.'"] 

Then he went out with another princess, but all she did was sit there and eat her supper, and she didn't even talk to him. She was no fun, and he didn't want to marry her.  

The fourth princess that he went out with didn't have anything interesting to talk about. She didn't like to read books, and she didn't know about anything that was going on in the kingdom, and she didn't seem very smart. He didn't want to marry her either.  

Then one day, he was out in the kingdom and he met a girl. She didn't look like a princess, but he didn't care. She was nice, and kind, and interesting, and loved the same books that he did, and new all about what was happening in the kingdom. And he thought she was pretty, but she didn't seem to care about that at all.  

So he went home and told  his parents that he wanted to invite her to the castle to meet them.

But, because the law said he had to marry a princess, his parents decided to test her and see if she was worthy. They put a whooooole bunch of mattresses on her bed, and put a pea underneath it - because a real princess would be so sensitive, she could feel the pea. 

And the girl felt it, alright. She tossed and turned all night long.  

At breakfast, the queen asked "How did you sleep, dear?" and the girl said, "Well, your majesty, I really do appreciate you inviting me to the castle, and the room I stayed in is beautiful, and I don't want to be rude, but I didn't sleep well at all. There was a huge lump in the bed. I tossed and turned all night, and I think I may even have a bruise! 

With that, the king and queen knew that the girl was, indeed, a princess, and they told their son that he could marry her.  

So after they'd dated for a while, and got to know each other very well, they got married. They were married a long, long time and they worked hard every day to love each other as best they could. 

That's pretty much how it goes, right?