My little two year old has developed a liking to the television, lately. Not in a bad way. He isn’t glued to it like a zombie or anything, but he has a few shows that he really enjoys watching…over…and over…and over again. His Aunt BK is partially to blame for this, along with his daddy. You see, Aunt BK bought him some books for his birthday and one of them was a little "Cars" story. Since he loves for Simon and I to read to him, we read this one with great enthusiasm. Simon even did a few voices for the characters (since we’d seen the movie). Well, Gavin just LOVED it when daddy would talk for Mater. Simon does a good redneck accent and Gavin thought that was so funny to hear daddy talk like that. Well…then we introduced him to the movie and that was all she wrote. We have probably seen the movie “Cars” 100 times. Thank god there are two movies for him to watch so I can at least enjoy a change in storyline. His first question is always, “Mommy, where’s Mater?” and I have to remind him that he doesn’t appear in the movie for just a little while longer. We’ve also found a few PBS cartoons that he enjoys. Thomas and Friends, Dinosaur Train and Super Why!. These are all cute shows that I don’t mind watching, however the theme songs can get stuck in MY head and cause…nightmares. Yes, I said nightmares. There has been more than one night when the song from Super Why! has rolled through my dreams like a broken record that wouldn’t stop skipping. Mix that with the theme to Thomas and Friends and it won’t make for a very restful night sleep.
Occasionally, there are a few others that he’ll watch if I have chores to do and he’s missed the others. There are only a few that I take issue with, though. Not for content, mind you. They are all very educational. It is more an issue with the characters. For example, Cailllou is about a little four year old boy and his growing up adventures. However, for some reason, the creators of this cartoon have chosen to draw him with no hair. He is four, so why doesn’t he have hair? It took Gavin a long time to grow hair too, but he has a full head of hair now. All of the other children on the show have hair. Does he have a skin disease? What is going on here that I missed? Sid the Science Kid is another one that irks me a little, but it is definitely not for content. I love anything that encourages kids to ask questions about their environment and look for an explanation. However, there is something about the drawing/animation that gives me the creeps. I think it is their mouths. It looks kind of like a puppet, but it’s not and it just looks weird.
I digress…
Last night he wanted to watch something, though, that he couldn’t explain to me very well. “I want to watch the boat in the water, Mommy”, he kept saying. However, I didn’t know what he was talking about. He went to Daddy and repeated the same statement, but Simon didn’t know either. He got so frustrated with us because we didn’t understand what he wanted. We would ask him questions like, “Who was on the boat? Or What was the boat doing? but he couldn’t think of the answer. We never figured out what he was talking about, so I just turned on a different show. Thankfully, he is a really easy going kid because the potential tantrum did not ensue. I think he just decided that he liked the one that we turned on instead and went back to his toys.
