Apollo watches TV

Mike and I have noticed in this past year that periodically Apollo will watch TV. You can see his face looking up at the screen and watch him pay attention. Sometimes it's very brief, just like he wants to check out what we're watching. Sometimes though he'll pay attention for a longer period of time. We've even had the occasion where he didn't like something he saw on TV and started to bark or growl but it never lasts too long. Last night was different though.
Apollo doesn't like our new Wii. We're not sure if it's because we're not playing with him or if it's because we often look like we're throwing something but don't actually let go. Regardless, he gets fussy when we play. Last night I was making up some additional miis for our Wii. I was having fun making one to look like Mike's brother, Scott. Scott has every large, bushy eyebrows that pretty much form a unibrow. As I was trying large scary looking eyebrows on this mii Apollo started growling and barking at the TV. He was completely worked up and very upset. At first I laughed and thought it was the scary looking face but I could not get him to settle down. I finally had to change the screen so the large mii face wasn't there anymore to calm him down. When Mike came home we laughed about Apollo barking at Scott. However, when I showed Mike we picked a different mii and Apollo went berserk over that mii as well. So apparently there's something about the miis that Apollo doesn't like. For the rest of the evening though when we had the TV on Apollo would periodically walk up and check out the TV, almost like he was checking to make sure it was real people and not the miis. This weekend every one's coming over to our house to watch the Superbowl and play the Wii. It should be interesting to see how Apollo responds.

Jesus dies every year

So a few years ago while I was finishing my Masters but before I moved back to Texas I ended up taking care of three boys. It was an interesting experience to be a nanny and I really enjoyed it. It's always fun to learn how to parent on someone else's child. One thing I already knew is that children are very observant of what is said and done around them. That made me very picky about what I would play on the radio in the car. Since even country songs occasionally use inappropriate language or topics I just left the local Christian station on. I knew there wouldn't be anything on that channel that I would be embarrassed to have the boys tell their parents they had heard. The youngest boy, age 4, spent the most time in the car with me and probably heard the radio the most.

After I had been with them a few months we were in the car one day when Tucker's voice comes from the back seat. "You always listen to songs about Jesus. Why do you love Jesus so much?" I was a little caught off guard but said I loved Jesus because God loved me. He asked how I knew that. I then tried in very simple, 4-year-old terms to explain that God had sent Jesus to die for our sins because he loved us. I didn't get very far in to my explanation before Tucker interrupted me. "Oh, I know all about that. Every year at Easter Jesus dies and comes back to life." So there you have it from a 4 year old's point of view.

To remember for the future...

Right now we don't have TIVO or a DV-R. I know this may seem shocking, but Mike and I aren't that addicted to TV shows. If we miss something we usually don't care. The only reason we have Direct TV in fact is so that Mike can get ESPN and watch his favorite sports teams. . The other weekend while we were visiting Mike's family I was reminded of why, when we start a family, that we will need to invest in a DV-R. Ethan (the second oldest nephew) was sitting at lunch when his mom opened a diet coke and poured it into her glass. As it bubbled and fizzed Ethan looked at it and said "mmm, drinkability!" (If you're not familiar - this would be the latest Budweiser commercial) I couldn't keep a straight face and all the adults began to laugh. Of course, this only encourages a 4 year old to keep repeating it. This whole thing was especially funny because Scott is looking for position as a Baptist pastor and so they don't drink alcohol. Ethan finally finished lunch by showing us that he knew what commercial it was from by saying the entire line "Budweiser... it's drinkability". At this point I told Megan that they might as well give up and break out the margaritas because everyone is going to think they're lushes anyway.
As funny as it was though it made me think about what children see and hear. From an academic standpoint I know this and have taught it in Child Development. It's something completely different to be reminded of it in real life though. Megan and Scott try to restrict what the children see on TV and if they think a violent or inappropriate commercial is coming on then they turn off the TV for a minute. It never occurred to them though to turn off the beer commercials during football. So that is something we'll need to remember in the future: if we don't want our children to be exposed to commercials then a DV-R will need to be ordered.
All of this reminded me of the kids I used to nanny for and the youngest one's interpretation of Easter, Christ's death and resurrection... but that's for another day.