Monsters

One of Amanda's favorite game is what we call "Monsters!"

I would say I highly support it because it only involves me, Champee and Jackie Lou (this is the name we call our blankets... get it? Jackie Lou Blanket :))

So the game was inspired when Champee was able to watch Monsters Inc. and we're just trying to recreate the first scene where we pretend to be the newbie monsters learning how to scare a kid.  I'll become Sulley and then she'll pretend to be Mike (although she really looks like Boo)... and then we'll try to scare Mommy by putting on the blanket and walk towards her with some groaning sounds.  Then we repeat scaring until we get sleepy.

I love this game for two reasons:

One, it's cheap :)  I don't need to buy expensive toys to play and spend time with my baby.  It's simple yet I love it that my baby loves playing with Daddy more than the gadgets or any material things.  I realized this more since I got chickenee this past few days and that we don't really have a quality time to play monsters together.  But good thing there's the power of technology and that we're able to play with the help of Skype even if we're just a room apart.

Virtual monsters!

Second is that it inspires creativity.  This is where I would thank Barney!  He did inspire a lot of kids to think and use imagination to have some fun.  And during Champee's childihood, as she watch those Barney episodes, that sparked her creativity in almost all areas of her life.  She literally does all sort of role playing every day and the Monster game is just one of the by products of her imagination.

One thing i realized from this game is that the cost of the toy is inversely proportional to the value it could give to our children... the simpler the toys, our kids will have more opportunity to turn them into something fun with the use of imagination like what Champee did with a simple blanket.