Spamming My Own Blog

For H's birthday, his friend E. (the adorable son of one of my bestest friends from high school) gave him a DVD (and some other cute stuff). As much as H. constantly asks for DVDs, the truth is that he really just wants me to go through the exercise of putting them on--he doesn't really want to watch them. Even the beloved Nemo doesn't get much screen time these days; he'd rather have me pop it in, and have it play in the background while he does ten million other things. He doesn't even like or watch most television shows geared to toddlers. He'll sit through about 7 minutes of Little Einsteins (long enough to say Einstein and pat pat pat pat while Rocket takes off). He likes the idea of Dora more than he likes watching it. The Backyardigans (a cult favorite of my neices) enjoyed a two week run in this house; unfortunately, it was the same episode over and over, and now I've got the lyrics to "Mystery Lifeguard" occupying the space in my brain where whatever I knew about calculus used to be. (No one can surf Tiki Beach waves/Till they've got rad moves aplenty/One or two moves just won't make it/I'm talking fi-i-i-ive, te-e-e-e-en or twenty/When you are rad you will get there/And you'll get stylishly wet there...Chorus, etc.) We bought him this a couple of months ago because he saw it on HBO and asked for it by name 500 times a day. But it wore out its welcome pretty soon. Goodnight indeed.

So when H. opened this, I thought, there's no way he's going to sit through that. But he did. Again and again. It's only about 30 minutes long. He asks for it every day. Now, you'd think that his enthusiasm would be enough for me. But no. Contrary to popular belief, he's learning from it. Learning, I say! From the television! I am not exaggerating at all when I say that he not only KNOWS the entire alphabet, can READ the entire alphabet, but can also say it PHONETICALLY. Sure, there's some annoying exposition, and the score isn't close to say, the fine work on Backyardigans, but somehow, magically, it has taught H. to read the alphabet. And he likes it. He's excited when I put it in the machine and the smile never leaves his face. Plus, I get time to do stuff around here without him pulling me around by my thumb.

This morning H., uncharacteristically, woke at 5am. He's on the mend from being sick the last few days, so I retrieved him from his crib and brought him into our bed to see if he'd go back to sleep. I ran my fingers gently across his forehead in the way that calms him and I could have sworn I saw his eyes closing. We were relaxed. All of a sudden, at full volume, my boy says, "R!" Then "A." M." "O!" "N! N! N!" "E? E?" "S!!!"

He was reading my tee shirt. He's so punk rock, my kid. Thank you, Tad.

Comments

[marla]

you should get a kick back. i just bought it.

[Jo]

This kid? A genius.

[Jill]

you have me sold!

[Figlet]

I'm gonna order one for LSP. Because I am SOOOO over her pointing at the stash of DVDs and saying "un, un, un," as if we are a French speaking family. Like H, she doesn't watch them. It's the thrill of the chase. "Un DVD Maman, s'il te plait". Good spam. Like Marla, I'm going to order one as well. Because Baby doesn't get her first Prada until she can learn to spell it.