Favorite Things - Summer 2011

I used to keep track of all of Elise's "favorite things" of the moment on her blog, and realized the other day that I have not been as diligent about keeping good records of what the kids are "into" from moment to moment. I am going to start getting much better about that, because really the children's likes and obsessions have a large impact on the entire family!

Books
Where the Wild Things Are - Both kids (but especially Lucas) are currently completely obsessed with this book right now. They both know all the words cover to cover, but insist on reading it every night. The favorite part, of course, is the Rumpus.

A Bad Case of Stripes - This is a book Elise picked out with a gift certificate she'd gotten to a book store for her birthday. She adores this book, which gets read almost every night since she got it. I'd say she made a good choice!

Toys

Cars & Trains - Lucas still really loves to play with cars and trains the most of everything and has continued to expand his imaginative play, creating conversations and elaborate (for a 2 year old) scenes.

Coloring - Not sure if this counts as a toy, but Elise has been completely obsessed with coloring lately. So much so that she actually colored an entire Jumbo coloring book in two days (doing a really good job too!) All of this practice has actually greatly enhanced her coloring skills!

Dolls - Elise has a ton of dolls, but they certainly do not go to waste! She still loves to play with her dolls regularly, although the way she plays with them has changed a bit. When she was younger, she always put the dolls to sleep, whereas now she puts them into school and makes them have conversations with one another (in addition to putting them to sleep!)

TV Show

Calliou - Much to my and Marty's chargin, this contiues to be the kids favorite tv show, although for a minute they were into Berenstain Bears, that phase passed very quickly and now it's back to Calliou.

Movie

Cinderella - Both children are easily scared and don't like to watch mean characters so they are fairly limited in the movies they like. They don't like much (because almost all movies have a plot with a bad/mean guy) but for some reason, in spite of the Evil Stepmother, Stepsisters and Lucifer, the kids have absolutely embraced all things Cinderella. We have movie night every Friday and 90% of the time, this is the movie that is chosen. There is also a lot of love for Cinderella 2 (if you haven't seen it, you aren't missing much) which also makes it into the rotation quite often. There is also a Cinderella 3 (which is actually fairly decent) but we have only watched it once and Elise declared it "too scary" and is boycotting it. Lucas really enjoys it, however, and has watched it quite a few times. They do like a few other movies (Aladin and Tinker Bell: Great Fairy Rescue are the others that come to mind) but Cinderella is by far their favorite for movie night. At Grams house, both kids adore Shrek. I have even caught Elise randomly reciting entire scenes from it, so it must be a big hit.

Food

Yogurt - A morning staple and frequent snack - probably the thing asked for the most by our kids. Also in this category is the drinkable yogurt, which in our house somehow became dubbed Monkey Juice because the kind we get has a monkey on the bottle.

Cereal Bars - Man my kids love cereal bars and would probably eat nothing else for meals and snacks if I let them. It is a new trend but has come on very strong in the last two weeks. They pretty much love all granola bars, which we call gorilla bars at our house because that what Elise called them before she could say "granola" and we thought it was adorable. I will probably call them gorilla bars for my entire life and people will probably think I am insane.

Themes
Princess/Fairy - Elise is still complete into princesses, although she is starting to like fairies more and more. Lucas also loves princesses, particularly princess books. He seems to like Jasmine the best because he has an obsession with looking at bellys and Jasmine's belly is - conveniently for him - "sticking out".

Superhero - Even though Lucas knows little to nothing about superheroes (other than what they look like) he really loves Superhero stuff. Batman continues to be his favorite, with Superman coming in a close second and Spiderman a somewhat distant but respectable third. He likes to wear capes and fake fly around, but mostly he just likes anything that has a superhero on it.