fuss vision

In the Utopian vision of family life promulgated by most parenting guides television exists mainly as a negative, the thing you righteously shun in favor of reading out loud, gamboling across grassy fields pursuing fluttering garlands of butterflies and then settling down in the living room to assemble a wooden puzzle designed by a team of German child development PhD's. And before you have a child it all sounds wonderful, necessary and possible. "Our baby won't grow up staring at the teevee like we did!"

But as with most well meaning advice related to proper modes of childrearing, I'll paraphrase Von Clauswitz-

"No campaign plan survives first contact with the Fuss."

There are times, more frequent than I'd like, when it becomes imperative that something distract his ire/fascination/affection/mania. If one of the OldDaughters happens to be around, fantastic- I hand him off like a football and get back to making dinner, or cleaning the living room, or whatever action he was rendering impossible with the implacable tsunami of his two year old-ness.

But if they aren't....


I salve my inflamed parenting pride with the watery balm of streamed content. "He's not actually watching teevee," I reason, "he's watching SHOWS." And while it's true our trusty Roku protects him from the vile sewage of modern broadcast advertising, the genius of corporate profiteers is revealed by the brilliance of turning characters into products.

"SQUAREPANTS!" he'll suddenly shout when we're at the grocery store. I look around and there it is, Spongebob toothpaste, or juice boxes, or washclothes, or whatever.

But to some extent all of that is what it is- we live in a corporate capitalist paradise and relentless marketing and huckesterism is one of the things we have to figure out how to accommodate. Those little low coolers at Starbucks and everywhere that proffer treats at toddler eye level with no annoying doors to block their grasping hands, the stickers on the floor of the supermarket that act like toddler magnets, etc etc. To the bulk of American society your child is just a consumer with zero self control, which predictably makes their eyes light up like a slot machine paying off. I'm sure someone out there is working on Baby MasterCard for the 5 and under set, parents being the only impediment to fully leveraging this untapped demographic resource.

Anyway.

Fuss has his favorites.
He loves Kipper, who used to be "doggo" but now goes by his proper name. He's also been enjoying Futurama, which he calls "rocketship". But his current video crush is a specific episode of Shaun the Sheep (aka "Sheepy!") where the pigs play spooky pranks on the sheep. It's got everything you need to wind Fuss up into a paroxysm of joy- a ghost, a flaming pumpkin and a scarecrow. I really need to film him watching it, it's by far the most exciting thing he's ever seen. He's prone to cheering "HAPPY WEEN!" whenever confronted by the traditional iconography and I need to get it documented before he figures out the right pronunciation.

He's already abandoned our favorite Fuss-ism, EEEEEE-EYE! for the more accurate but less adorable there is is! Children travel fast, much faster than our perceptions of them.