Waking Up with the Wiggles

There are lots of you blog readers out there who probably don't know who the Wiggles are quite yet. Hopefully by the time you have a toddler they will have cashed in on their 15 minutes of fame which is coming due ANY DAY now. But until then they seem to sell out venues faster than Timberlake or Jay-Z.

I've learned who they are through the magic of morning television. Life wasn't always this way. Let me explain ...

... a long, long time ago, about 17 days ago to be exact our mornings ceased to be routine. It USED to be that Megan would wake up somewhere between 6:30 and 7. She would whine loud enough to be heard, at which point, Jillian would get up with her, get breakfast and then Meg and I would play in our room while Jill got ready for work.

However, 17 days ago all that disappeared. It seems Megan has gotten into a new routine. This one is not as fun. She likes to wake up anywhere from 2 am through 4 am and cry. We have two options. Ignore it, but be kept awake in the hopes that she'll stop in 15, 20, 30, 45 minutes. OR we can go grab her, chuck her between us, and have her kick, slap, hit, flop all over us ... albeit quietly giving us a 50-50 chance of sleep. We opted for the latter.

Well, about 14 days ago, because of these nights, I was too exhausted to put on a happy face and decided to turn on the TV in our room to 'Sprout' ... Channel 295 on DirecTV for those sadists among you wanting to check it out.

(It's at this point in the proceedings I should mention that up until this point Megan's TV watching has been almost zero. I read numerous child rearing books that talked about a baby's dendrites not growing as richly in babies who were allowed to passively watch TV. That obviously freaked me out because those dendrites supposedly are what collect all the information in your brain. The more you have the better I figure. So she has never watched cartoons, videos, DVDs, etc. Of course, she wouldn't be MY child without me creating one loophole. I decided that sports were okay. So while she's played in the living room, ESPN was always on ... in a classical conditioning sort of 'experiment.' I'm hoping that if I mess with her dendrites, then I'm at least doing it so she has a subconscious love for sports. Yes, I'm an idiot.)

Well, the first show she saw was 'Sesame Street.' She liked it and sat attentively on the bed next to me and watched the characters. But I deemed 'Sesame Street' okay because Malcolm Gladwell, a FABUOLOUS author of several MUST READ books, discusses the creation of 'Sesame Street' and mentions to some degree all the testing and work they did with child development specialists and psychologists to create the show as beneficial for kids. So how can I be against that?

But eventually that show ended. And the Wiggles began. Now, I'm sure there was just as much behind-the-scenes testing to make sure it was doing all the right things developmentally for kids, but something seems off about the show. I just don't get it. But you know who does? My daughter. It is akin to a drug addiction at this point and we've only started watching it two weeks ago.

In that time span, she now can climb out of the bed, walk over to the TV and turn it on. If it's not on 'Sprout' she will walk over to me and hand me the remote. I'm not even kidding. But the show makes her laugh out loud and she even dances wildly to the songs.

I knew at some point I would cave and she would watch TV. And without TV at daycare I realize her watching 30-45 minutes a day of it isn't the end of the world. But there are two major problems with the recent developments.

One, and most importantly to me, this programming is EXTREMELY repetitive. In the two weeks we've started watching I've already seen the same songs and skits a good 5 times. I'm not even exaggerating. For an adult it's mind-zapping.

Two, because it's becoming an addiction, it's becoming harder and harder to tear her away from it each morning. This week we've had two meltdowns from her when we've had to turn it off and take her to daycare. She cries, kicks, refuses to kiss me goodbye. Hmm, this can't be good.

I don't have pictures of this morning ritual, primarily because I'm lazy, but promise me it's getting out of control. Last night was the first night she finally slept through the night in her own crib again, which helps my energy level in the morning and her disposition too. So let's hope these two weeks were just her having a cold, or needing her parents and not a harbinger of things to come. I'll keep you updated on the great cartoon battle of 2009.