Snowman and Independence

We had a fun time over the weekend. There was enough snow and it was good packing snow that we made Drake's first snowman! We sing the book Frosty the Snowman occasionally (Daddy sings it the best as a heavy metal song), and he had fun making this snowman. In this first picture, Drake is saying "Snoooooww" and you can see me in the background fixing the nose on the snowman. Daddy added the eyes, mouth and hat. Drake added the arms and drew on some clothes with his shovel.

Drake is definitely becoming more independent! Yesterday after he woke up from his nap, he opened the door to his room, walked downstairs, and went to the living room asking to watch TV. He has never done that before! He usually just sits in his bed and asks for someone to come get him. So I was home with him last night while Daddy was working and do you think he stayed in bed? Of course not! I tucked him in 3 times (1 - normal bedtime, 2 - he startled me because I didn't know he was there and I heard his voice say Mommy and it wasn't through the monitor, 3 - I heard him coming down the stairs). The forth time I locked the gate at the bottom of the stairs and brought him right back upstairs and tucked him in. The fifth, and last, time I locked the gate at the bottom of the stairs and didn't go get him right away. I kept telling him to go to bed from a different room and he hung out there for 10 minutes, then he started crying, once he calmed himself down a bit I walked him upstairs. He wanted to snuggle so we did, and I tucked him in. We start his bedtime routine at 8 and he is usually in bed at 8:40 - 9, but last night he was finally in bed at 10. Over the weekend we decided to take the gate down and never got around to doing it, and I think we'll leave it up a while longer!