Daniel the Dinner Fiend

At dinner-time, Daniel has proven to be significantly less picky than Natalie is nowadays. He normally puts away twice what she eats... except on the occasional day where she eats 3-4 helpings of whatever she's eating at the time. Last Sunday, Daniel enjoyed Jenn's "Shepherd's Pie" (2nd helping pictured). He loved the peas and when not shoveling handfuls of the mashed potato+cauliflower +meat+etc mix, he was mining for peas.

Today he had a dinner of some of the left-over Shepherd's Pie, cheese, and some of the herb-crusted chicken that, ever since we tried it, has been on our menu just about every week. He didn't do so well at eating dinner today as he was very tired when we started dinner late.

One of Daniel's good traits is that he LOVES his sleep and has no qualms about trying to get himself upstairs at bedtime. Now... when he gets up there, he's not always the best about getting ready for bed, but more often than not he goes to bed quietly once the lights are out. The downside to his love of sleep is that if we cannot let him get his sleep when he wants it, such as when we're out, he can turn into quite the cranky kid.

Battling Natalie's Ghosts and Monsters

Tom here again. A short while ago I made the mistake of letting Natalie watch Ghostbusters 2. She loved the movie and kept on watching it. I went to the library and borrowed the first Ghostbusters for her to watch. She loved that too.
Recently, though, she's been afraid of monsters and ghosts. She had the problem a while before Ghostbusters, but its back again. It's quite a challenge to help her to not be afraid. Some things we've tried:

• Tell her that we've made the monsters/ghosts go away. Doesn't work so well since she reasons that they'll come back.
• Take a note from the Ghostbusters and "trap" the monsters: Have her either color or draw the monster/ghost and then have her draw a "trap" for it. She loved coloring them in and then drawing the trap. Taking it a little further, she enjoyed tearing/cutting the picture to make that monster go away. Not a good long term solution though as she thinks up another.
• Recent one, working so far: we don't let monsters in the house.  We lock the door.

Amazingly enough... that one seems to be working ok. She hasn't come up with a way the monsters can get here since we lock the door. Guess we may have to hold off on "Monsters, Inc." since she might be afraid of those monsters or come up with the idea that mean monsters don't need to come through the front door, they can just come through closets magically.

Snow Fun with Natalie

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Tom here for another bi-weekly post :)
Today Natalie went out to have fun in the snow as I started the task of shoveling the snow off of the drive-way. She started out by trying to help pick up snow in the driveway and throw it to the side. It wasn't until Jenn came back from the YMCA that Natalie was convinced that she should go into the yard to play in the snow.

It was a very snowy day and didn't stop until around 3 PM. It was also the light-and-fluffy kind of snow that is not very good to play in... However I did convince her to "dig" a snowman by digging a small hole for the head, and having her dig other holes for the body. She suggested arms, so we dug those out. It did not photograph at all well. After that, Natalie made a snow angel and stomped around in the snow.

We also managed to take a little video of her walking around. Too bad I took it sideways so it doesn't look to good in Youtube (though at least I was able to rotate it!). Depending on how it shows up, you might have to open the link.