Laura Ingalls Wilder

Once again I am up early early. While I know its the weekend, Mr V over here still gets up at 5:15 just like he does during the week.

However, with a new episode of Grey's Anatomy to watch and a mug of hot chocolate with home-made marshmallows, its a nice way to start the weekend.

I think I am turning my son into an early tv-junkie. We, on occasion, play him those 'Baby Einstein-type videos', which really should be labeled 'baby-crack', as V will just gaze intensely at it until the dvd has ended and not make a single noise. The TV tends to be on almost all of the time we are home though, M watches a lot of sports on the weekend and also while he does all of his grading.

Right now V is lounging in his bouncy chair (fighting sleep) in the livingroom, while I type away and watch those shows that I like that I record as I don't have time to watch them during the week. I face his little chair away from the tv,but just noticed his little neck craning around to watch Grey's Anatomy, and then he cooed during a Desperate Housewives commercial. Maybe it was all the pretty (overly botoxed) ladies with their shiney hair and colourful clothes? Who knows, but it surprised me.

I changed the channel to an old Jackie Chan movie, and he fell asleep. Well, at least I know what he thinks of that! (I love Jackie Chan and M does not, so clearly he takes after his father)

When my sister and I were little, we lived way up in the country, down an oiled gravel road out in the middle of the forest. In retrospect, it was all very "Little House on the Prarie". We read lots of Laura Ingalls Wilder, built 'fairy houses', raided the neighbours chicken coop (well, maybe thats not very L.I.W.). We did have a tv, but we only had one or 2 channels. We mostly watched the Sunday night Disney special at 6 pm, and then went right to bed. When we moved down the Island to Sidney, we got 13 channels which was so exciting to us! Even more exciting for me as my sister couldn't read that well. (Hurray poor reading skills!)

Actually I mean that after school I would read the tv guide, as she couldn't, and then I would tell her precisely what was on tv. But only if it was something I wanted to watch. Any shows that she liked were never on when I had that tv guide in my hands. Such a nice big sister I was!

I guess what I am trying to say is that we were never really exposed to huge amounts of tv when we were younger, which I think is good. And that I also don't want my son to be totally reliant on tv as entertainment. The imagination is a much better tool for entertainment.

I just caught my son sneaking a peek at Jackie Chan.... he is indeed my son after all!