Of Fairy Tales and Nursery Rhymes

Jack and Jill went up the Hill

to fetch a pail of water,

God knows what they did up there

but they came down with a daughter

8

There you go, this is my version of 'Jack and Jill Went Up the Hill'. Can't remember where I learnt it from (I am not that creative to come up with something like that) but yep, it stayed in my mind forever. As time goes by, I couldn't remember the original version until I heard it in one of The Prince's nursery rhyme CDs. "Ohhh... Jack broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after", I thought.

s

I guess bringing up a toddler is your way of returning to childhood. I started learning 'Humpty Dumpty', 'Itsy Bitsy Spider' and 'Polly puts the Kettle on' again, and wow, didn't know London Bridge can be built with 'iron & ore', 'sand and something', and it goes on and on...

k

As we read The Prince his fairy tales story books (now he has about 10 bedtime books which we let him choose what he wants to read each night), it struck us two again how unrealistic fairy tales are.

k

It was 'The 3 Little Pigs' tonight. The wolf came to the last house which was made of brick and since he couldn't blow it down (the previous 2 houses were made of straw and wood - in case you are wondering, just like me until I got the book), he told the Pigs he was going to jump down through the chimney to get to them. But the pigs put a pot of boiling water under the chimney to hurt the wolf.

l

So as our son was drinking his milk and pointing to the wolf running out of the door, Daddy remarked how come the wolf isn't seriously injured and his backside isn't even red. I agreed because it was boiling water which would have scalded the wolf. In fact, the pigs could even cook him for dinner straight away, and with such hot water, you could even skin the wolf easily (ok the sadist is coming out again). Daddy highlighted too, that the 3 pigs were clothed in shirt and overalls while the wolf was totally naked.

m

The next thing I have to learn now are the songs inside Thomas 'Sing-A-Long' series. There are 13 songs and The Prince would give you the key words of the song as a way to select which tune he wants, such as 'Trucks', 'James', 'Shed'. This is a challenge, we are talking about an average of a 3 minute song which comes with chorus and different paragraphs. To start with, I am not even musically inclined. Just waiting for the day when The Prince can speak more words to say: 'Ok Mummy, stop stop, please stop, I'll just listen to the CD."

Lastly, if you know the Barney tune of 'I Love You', try singing to these lyrics.

9

I love you, you love me,

Let's get together to kill Barney,

With a big bang and there's Barney on the floor,

No more purple dinosaur!

l

(heard this from my sis and I like this one because I really don't like that purple lump of fat with the stumpy tail)