Family Night and TV

Every Friday night we have our Family Night. We used to alternate between playing games one week and then watching a movie the next week. Now we've slowly gone to just watching movies on Family Night because Elina loves movies and it's difficult to play games with Eli around. (He loves to bend those Candyland cards and move pieces around on the board.) On Family Night we eat dinner a little earlier, get the kids into their PJs right after, and pick a movie to watch. While we watch we get special treats, like ice cream or jello. It's been really fun and we all look forward to it. Elina has her own calendar in her room where she crosses out each day as it goes by and she is always most excited for Family Night.

We try to use these Family Nights to introduce Elina to certain characters or movies....but it hasn't really been working out that well. See, Elina gets really scared of stuff. Like weird stuff. She didn't like the apartment manager, Ivan, in the Curious George movie (the one in the green outfit in the picture). She thought Horton Hears a Who was creepy. Toy Story 2 made her too sad because Woody "got lost." I know it sounds cute that she would find these innocent things scary, but in reality it is VERY FRUSTRATING! We never know what she finds scary, so we just take a guess every week. We have turned off many movies because of her fears.

Here's how it usually goes down. We suggest a new movie and she says she wants to watch Tinkerbell. We suggest the new movie again and tell her that it's a good movie. She says ok hesitantly. We turn it on and she watches with a concerned face. Then she starts asking questions with a squeaky, I'm-about-to-cry voice. So we pause the movie, ask her why she's scared and inevitably, we have to turn off the movie and start a happy-go-lucky movie, like Tinkerbell. You don't understand how many times we have watched Tinkerbell. Don't get me wrong, we think it's an entertaining movie and we loved it the first few times, but we are SO over it now! This last Family Night we stopped Toy Story 2 to watch Tinkerbell and B and I basically fell asleep. Is that really Family Night??? I feel badly that sometimes we use Family Night to catch up on some zzzz's, but we can only take so much of Tink.

Luckily, we've managed to get Elina to sit through 2 new movies recently. She thought Surf's Up was funny and she liked The Little Mermaid (minus some Flotsam, Jetsam, and Ursula parts). We've actually been walking around the house singing Little Mermaid songs. (Watching The Little Mermaid has really brought back some memories for meWe're glad she got to see a few new movies, but the funny thing is she doesn't ask for these 2 movies again. She only asks for Tinkerbell over and over again. We're doomed.
Eli, on the other hand, loves any movie that we put in. His ultimate fave thing to watch right now is Elmo. His face just lights up when he sees Elmo on the screen. He can even say Elmo kind of....more like "eh-mo." Eli is such a boy. He will just climb onto the couch, rest his back into a pillow, and then stare right into the TV. He is a true lounge lizard.

It's funny because we never let Elina watch TV before she was 2 years old, but Eli is another story. First of all, it's hard to not let the little one watch TV if the older one gets to watch it. Secondly, Eli is so clingy after his nap that I can't cook dinner (or do anything else) without him attached to my hip. I tried to cook with my left hand, but it didn't work. For some reason, whenever Eli sees me at the stove, he has to be held. So now I resort to letting the kids watch TV after Eli's nap just so I can make dinner. Elina used to get to watch a show during Eli's nap, but now I need to save it until he wakes up. I used to think it was weird that moms would use the TV to get things done, but now I totally understand. I'm SO guilty of using the TV in order to cook dinner! I guess you do what you have to do, right?