Not surprisingly, a spot-check of this blog for the popular search term “Handy Manny” returns no fewer than one dozen results… and our family vocab on “Lovely” shows appears to have been born in the late-2015-early-2016 toddler television era.
Yesterday I was talking to my three-almost-four-year-old nephew Bry-Bry and heard the words Dinosaur Train. Who knew PBS Kids is actually a modern day time machine? It’s been a long time since our living room was filled with the sounds of programs where we consistently envisioned a group of millennials in library glasses and sneakers, sitting around a conference room table, saying things like, “What do little boys like?”
“Bugs.”
“Airplanes.”
“Trucks!”
“Tractors?”
“Lions.”
“Animals.”
“Baby animals!”
“Robots?”
“Cars.”
“Dinosaurs!”
“Trains!”
And thus was born a lifetime of wheely cartoon animals and dinosaurs on trains.
For the last maybe two years, we fell down some kind of iPad Minecraft rabbit hole. iPads and parentally-supervised YouTube channels became the screen time entertainment of choice… an uncomfortable realization has just come over me that perhaps I’ve forgotten to warn the world about Stampy and Pat & Jen? OMG I hope it’s not too late.
Over the last few months or so we’ve introduced more of a family sitcom post-dinner and homework lovely show routine. It’s been good since the boys are so busy with soccer and such that we consume our screen time as a family. This has given rise to several new media genres including a crazy cool show called Magic for Humans and a formulaic school-aged hit called My Cat from Hell. Or as Jake calls it, “My Cat from H-E-double hockey sticks.”
But our hands-down favorite new family lovely show is called The Zoo. It takes place in the boogie-down Bronx. We’re all dying to go there, especially before Mert the twenty-nine-year-old goose flies off to the great beyond. Oh no… I just googled Mert and he passed away in March at the age of 29. RIP big Mert.
Last week we’re watching the Zoo and it’s an episode about a baby gazelle with developmental issues. Man those baby gazelles are lovely. Anyway, Nate says, “What are those again Mom? Cantaloupes?”
It’s been too long…