Cartoon of the Week

As we've mentioned before in This Space, Alli's all-time favorite thing to watch is Elmos' Ducks. And since Mommy B and I finally got rid of our dumb phones for smart ones... we've spoiled her by letting her in on the secret that we can now stream YouTube videos directly to our phones. This means that instead of her coming over to the computer to watch her favorite two minutes and five seconds of Elmo, she'll now make a quack sound anytime she sees us with our phones in our hands. This of course is immediately followed by her grabbing the phone out of our hands and plopping herself down to stare at the screen. Obviously she doesn't understand all the other wonderful things a smartphone can do, but in her world the only thing it's good for is seeing Elmo with his guitar and ducks quacking along to the beat.

There have actually been instances where the only way we're able to get her to eat dinner is by pulling up a Sesame Street mix online and feeding her while she stares blankly at the screen. I'm not particularly proud of this development, although I have to applaud her ability to see the spoon coming in her periphery and to open her mouth without ever taking her eyes off the screen.

However, it's gotten worse on other occasions - and while having a DVD player in Mommy B's Pilot is great for long trips - we're trying to curb her boob tube intake as much as possible. There really isn't any reason she should be watching much (if any) television at this age, so we're taking steps to ween her back a bit. We leave the TV off in the evening when Mommy B brings her home from daycare, that way she can just interact with us (and Scarlett) and not get distracted by whatever crappy daytime program is wrapping up or influenced by all the bad news that comes on during her dinner time.

Needless to say, we're taking this week's cartoon to heart! I don't want to have a TV-zombie kid already...