Screens

Sacha and I just had an interesting night of tv:  we watched the State of the Union (sort of, over the din of our kids and friends over for dinner) and then followed it up with the Biggest Loser, which is the only show we really follow and even that is sporadic.  It's not that we don't love screens - we're both totally addicted to the internet (although we don't have iphones or anything, partially because I know I would be on mine all the time if I had one) but we basically never watch tv. 

We were just chatting about the kids and I was saying that I have to give myself a pat on the back, because despite the looooong winter afternoons and evenings, I have succumbed to showing them a video only once or twice in the last few months.  I have no judgment against families that watch more tv than we do, but it's just not our thing.  (Although, we did let Mateo watch Cars for the first time over Christmas and just one and a half viewings of it has caused it to completely take over our lives and his imagination.  Wow.  Lightening McQueen is practically a member of our family now, along with all his little car friends.)

However, I just dropped an obscene amount of money having a dvd player installed in our swagger wagon.  We may not let our kids watch tv in normal life (and, actually, I don't think they even know that regular tv exists, although they sure do know that the dvd player is a magical thing) but on road trips or on vacation, all rules are off.   When we're on vacation, we bring portable dvd players and let Mateo watch up to two hours in the mornings so we can actually sleep in.  Tali sleeps in on her own, thank goodness, so she misses out on that perk.  We also let them watch videos on planes and in the car, although we do try to break it up with books and games and other stuff.

When we got the van, we decided that we were done with portable dvd players losing their charge mid road-trip, so we agreed that we would get one installed in the van.  Wow, those things are expensive.   Hopefully, though, it will be worth it!  We have some driving to do in the next month and I'm counting on that piece of equipment to get us through! 

We're going to visit Sacha's parents this weekend.  Then, next Friday, I'm taking the kids on an up and back daylong adventure to Seattle to see a dear friend.  And then after that, Mateo's taking ski lessons every Saturday in February at Mt. Hood, so there will be a lot of driving to and fro.  We even went out on a limb and reserved some new videos and kids' movies from the library, including our very first foray into Yo Gabba Gabba.  I don't have plans to change our regular mostly non-tv life at home, but I'm happy to expand our horizons on the road.  Let's just hope the kids can keep their earphones on so I don't have to experience all the new videos with them!