Ah, toddlers and repetition.  Whether it be movies, books, songs or games, they want to do them over and over and over again.  Surprisingly, it hasn’t bothered me as much as I would have thought. I’ve seen the same movies and shows more times than I count, and have several books pretty much memorized, but I’ve come to terms with it.

Granted, there are some nights where you can only read the same book so many times in a row before you just want to hit your head against a wall. I get it, though, he enjoys it and is working on memorizing it and perhaps understanding it better.  There’s nothing more adorable than when you have him “read” a book to you.

As far as movies go, we thankfully aren’t asked to watch ‘Frozen’ every single evening (not that we gave in every night… okay, almost). He’s got several films on rotation, and more recently has been enjoying ‘Tangled’ when we decide to let him watch some TV.  We’re cutting back because he gets really into it (hence the series of photos for this post).  He doesn’t always sit through an entire movie, but sometimes the level of intensity as he zones out is a bit much.

Because he’s been getting up early, we’ve also gotten into a bad habit of letting him watch an episode of something in our bed while we try and get everything ready for the day.  For a while it was ‘Mickey Mouse Clubhouse’, sometimes ‘Daniel Tiger’, and now ‘Super Why!’  I kind of don’t mind all that much, though, because he fully interacts with ‘Super Why!’ and points out different letters, so at least he’s learning.  That’s what we tell ourselves anyway.

Much to his dismay, though, we really are doing our best to cut back on TV time. He doesn’t watch more than the recommended amount for his age, but that also means that Phoebe ends up watching a lot more TV than we’d like since they hang out in the same areas. Sure, she’ll still play while the TV is on, but more often than not she finds the screen a little too fascinating.  The trick is just finding something terribly interesting to grab his attention so he doesn’t even ask for a movie.  So far we’ve discovered that surprise balloons work great, as does giving him his own purse (so that he stopped dragging mine around).  I’ll have to think of something creative for tonight, however…