We don’t have proper TV in our house. We don’t stream TV and we don’t have any kind of box hooked up to the telly. When we moved in we didn’t have the money to get it set up and the longer we went without it, the less we felt that we needed it.
What we do have is a vast collection of films and TV series along with the requisite viewing device to watch them on.
While I was on maternity leave with the Noodle I watched ER in its entirety, beginning when he was just two weeks old and continuing until a couple of weeks before I started back at work. Laurie reached a point where he was so familiar with the music that when it came on, he’d turn to the TV and stare at it!
A little while ago, feeling nostalgic for the days of Saturday morning cartoons, the spousal unit and I decided to start a little tradition. Each Saturday morning we’d pop on a cartoon to watch.
Initially this was the classic Stoppit and Tidyup though as that’s only thirteen episodes and each one runs at about five or six minutes, we powered through that. We followed it up with Paddington and paired the latter up with Batman.
Laurence does this amazing little dance to the opening theme music of these TV shows. Almost without fail, the music starts and he bobs up and down, usually with the massive grin on his face when he catches you watching him.
The downside to watching these programmes is that he insists on us watching them on a Saturday morning. Or any morning that he thinks might be a Saturday. They’re kept behind the TV out of reach, but he knows where they are and will grope for them and point and complain when we don’t get them out. He’s very persistent.
You also have to be careful what you say around him now. If you utter a word that sounds little too close to Batman or The Clangers, he’ll be there, trying to get the DVD case out and put the TV on.
We honestly don’t watch that much TV around him, but there are days when I think he’s utterly obsessed with it.
Take yesterday, for example. We’d picked up some Mr Men DVDs in town at the weekend, and they’d been placed on the bookcase at Laurie-height. He spotted them and before I knew what he was doing, he was getting the extension out to plug the TV (we don’t have it plugged in unless we’re about to watch it).
In the end, I let him pop a disc in and we enjoyed a peaceful few minutes as he sat on the rug, wearing nothing but a cloth nappy and his wellies, deeply engrossed in the adventures of Mr Tickle.
Perhaps there’s things I’d rather be watching than a bunch of brightly coloured characters getting up to antics on my screen. But his reactions to them are so cute, that I’m willing to forego the odd medical drama or two when it’s time for some TV time. It’s all time I’m getting to spend with my boy and I wouldn’t trade it for the world (and as an added bonus, sometimes it distracts him long enough to let me get some OU done)!
This post is part of a series for Blogtober 2019. See all my prompts below:
What are some of the programmes you have to watch? Are any of them chosen for you by someone else?