Who says you can't learn anything from TV?

Isaac and I do lots of things other than watch TV. We build block towers, read LOTS of books, color, play with play-doh, play in the sandbox, go for walks, go squirrel-spotting, etc etc. Our latest non-rainy-day activity is to go on marathon campus walks, like over an hour long. Here is Zombie Isaac staring at a fountain at the end of running all over the manicured campus wonderland:



However, we do watch our fair share of TV. Our goal every day is to limit his TV-watching to 2 hours or less a day, and most days we accomplish this. Days when he gets up reeeeeeal early? More won't kill him. Like his mama, he is bad at waking up, so we start the day slow with a lazy episode of The Wiggles, snuggling together on the couch. If mama is still relatively unconscious, we might watch two episodes. Somedays we'll watch Sesame Street in the middle of the day, but this doesn't hold his attention like the Wiggles, so I don't know if you can really count the full hour. Usually we watch zero TV the entire time Daddy is gone. Before bathtime we watch one more Wiggles. The boy (and his inner rock star) is psycho-crazy for the Wiggles, lemme tell ya. I feel guilty about the amount of TV we let him watch, but I comfort myself thinking that it's all pretty educational and stimulating for him one way or another. And most times (though I admit not always), one of us is there to watch it with him and interact with the show while it's going on.

We now have proof that he is not brain-dead because of it, and may even be picking up a few things. A few days ago I was hooked to Headline News to hear the latest about the Hurricane Rita situation. While sitting on the couch, Isaac found the Tivo remote and said "Wiggles?" as in "this news crap would bore anybody to tears; please let me watch my super-fun baby show." I said, "No, baby, we watched the Wiggles already this morning," and left the room for a couple of minutes to brush my teeth. Naturally Isaac messes with the Tivo remote, as he's seen us do so many times before. From the bathroom, I hear "click -- click -- click -- click" from Tivo. And then I hear the Wiggles theme song. My determined young man has navigated from live TV to a Tivoed episode of the Wiggles and then played it. Scary #1.

Here's Scary #2. Isaac has long been fascinated with Dada's tripod, which is sturdy and squat and not terribly baby-unfriendly. Tonight I was showing him how to turn the stage with the handle. Isaac turns handle towards him and brings his eye up to the handle's end, exactly as if he was looking into the eyepiece of a telescope:


Now, we actually do have a telescope, but have never used it or even brought it out of the closet since Isaac was born. Neither I nor Dada have ever made any objects into pretend telescopes. As far as I can tell, the only place he could have gotten this idea is from a bit on the Wiggles where Greg looks through a telescope up into the heavens, something he has maybe seen 3 times. Campus ju-ju + measured amounts of TV = one ultra-genius toddler?