Children's Programming

I just heard Ellie start babbling and fussing, letting me know she's no longer asleep this morning. Annie at the same time asked, "Mommy, you come in my room, put in my Elmo movie, it's funny!" I told Annie we'd go get her little sister first, then we'd go to her room. I started walking out of my room, and called out my typical, "It's OK Ellie, Mom's coming," to which Annie responded, "Not Annie, Ellie, I'm not coming, I'm going to my room to watch my 'puter!"

In this age of third graders who have their own cell phones, Annie was just over two years old when we put her first computer in her room. I have mixed feelings about this. It was a hand me down desktop computer that my sister Lacy couldn't quite fit in her carry on when she moved out to Virginia to nanny for a year, and with as quickly as computers become relics, it seemed silly to leave a perfectly good computer waiting in storage in my parent's basement when Lacy would just want to buy a new lap top when she came back next year. So, it was decided that rather than let Annie pound around on my more valuable Mac that I do freelance design and my scrapbooking on, that if she was gonna ruin a computer, it might as well be this one. (Sorry Lacy). Thus, the computer in my two year old's bedroom. She loves to play games on it, or just to bang on the keys and excitedly tell me, "Mom, I email!" But mainly, let's face it, it's an oversized 13" TV. So, mixed feelings. We go to the library and let Annie pick out a couple different videos, usually her choice is all Elmo's World, and I recently went online and bought her favorite one, as well as Zoe's Dance Moves, which has Paula Abdul teaching Elmo and Zoe how to dance. I like this one more than any of the others, and not just 'cause my 12-year old self loved Paula Abdul music more than words, and despite the fact my 29-year old self can't stand Paula Abdul on American Idol. Mainly I love this one 'cause Annie'll get up and dance along for huge portions of the video. And since we got the computer Annie doesn't usually watch any television in my room anymore, if her video that day is basically a kids' aerobic video in disguise, I feel less guilty about her viewing habits.

I kinda miss watching cartoons with Annie now that she has the computer though. Despite her almost unnatural love of Elmo, we would actually only catch Sesame Street occasionally, usually cuddling up for the last 15 minutes right before nap time. I've been surprised at how much of children's shows appeal, or downright speak to, the adults who get sucked into watching them. Usually it's Sesame Street, where the Count watches his favorite show, 24, complete with a Jack Bauer muppet hanging precariously from a cliff's edge for 24 seconds. That one cracked me up. Or when they had Stinky the Weed on Desperate Houseplants, where the plants weren't getting everything they needed at home. That one was actually kinda disturbing. But the part of a children's show that was the most aimed at parents as an 'in-joke', was when Dr. Ruth appeared as a guest host on a segment of Between the Lions. Here she counseled the letters 'un' that they were lacking excitement in their lives and after much innuendo they were partnered with the letter 'f' and when combined were finally able to have real passion, excitement, joy and well, fun, in their lives. It was uncomfortably odd. Annie, of course, didn't get anything from it but the fact that the letter 'f' combined with 'un' spells 'fun', which is a useful thing to learn; but then again, so is the fact that a partnership needs a certain sense of 'oneness' to be healthy and to achieve real passion, I guess. Just maybe not for my two year old. It made me feel like I do when she comes in when I'm watching anything on primetime television, except that all the other characters were puppets. Unless she's on The View or something, Dr. Ruth just doesn't seem right at 10 in the morning.