Inane Children's Shows

Why do children's programmers assume their shows need to be sugary and inane to keep a kid's imagination? It's for this reason that the entire Barney dynasty is banned from my house. Purple dinosaurs rank up there with Chris Farley on my annoyance spectrum.

By far the worst offenders are Christian children's shows. Having worked for a Christian publisher, I saw more poorly-produced shows than I'd like to admit. Cheesy accents, enormous mis-matched mustaches, over-pronounced words, and perky songs about nothing. Throw in a puppet and you've got yourself a best-seller.

The only Christian children's show I can bear to sit through is Veggie Tales. Smartly written, there are often jokes aimed just at the parents. It's obviously still geared towards kids, but it's not nearly as obnoxious as other offerings. Kids can learn from shows without hyper-color cheesiness. Don't insult their intelligence.

Mis-Pronouncifications

I'm an admitted grammar geek. I spend all day correcting the grammar and pronunciation of my two kids. Bean has a fairly extensive vocabulary... she recently told me she had a hypothesis about something (and used it correctly!). But some of her pronunciations are just too cute to fix.

A Guide to Bean's Language:

Old McDonald's = McDonalds. As in, "Old McDonald HAD a farm. But he got sick of all the animals, and now he has a restaurant."

Pasketti = Spaghetti. A fairly common one.

Hosdibull = Hospital. My mom was in the hospital recently, so this word has had a bit more use lately.

I know there are more I can't think of right now. It makes me sad to think she'll outgrow this one day!

Mr. Cellophane....

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel invisible?

As a mom, I feel like I exist solely to feed my hungry children, change Squish's diapers, and keep them from killing each other. As a wife, I'm supposed to have a hot dinner ready each night, and keep the house relatively clean. As a business owner, I am supposed to keep my clients happy, no matter what's going on in my life.

But sometimes I feel like no one really SEES me.

Sometimes I feel like I put all the effort into my relationships. That if I stopped communicating, they wouldn't really notice. I send text messages that never get responses. Repeatedly ask questions that would take 30 seconds to answer... but never get an answer. Try to make appointments with no luck.

Sometimes I expect to look in the mirror and see no one there.