Straight Out of TV Hell

One of the rare times they are not pestering mom and dad.

Have you ever tried to watch a movie with a 4 year old and 2 year old in the same house?

Check that. Have you ever tried to watch even a half-hour television show with the children bouncing around the house?

Thank God for DVR. If I couldn’t record and then stop and start a television show a million times, I don’t know if I would ever watch anything from beginning to end. I’d forever be trapped in a loop of NCIS crimes that occur but never get solved.

When I first discovered DVR, I thought its main use would be to prevent fights between my wife and I. Suddenly, I had this tremendous device that allowed me to stop whatever I was watching and look intent and concerned while my wife babbled on about her day. When she was done, I picked right back up where I left off. Genius!

But now that I have kids, the DVR experience has reached a whole new level. With approximately 36 interruptions every time my wife and I sit down to watch a show, the DVR is the only thing that allows me to stay up on the disturbingly new macabre cases Criminal Minds stars must solve.

As soon as we sit in front of the TV, chaos ensues. This is when the kids choose to fight. Or cry. Or need something. Or ask questions.  

It is “Mommy, can I have a drink?” or “Daddy, listen to this new song I made up,” every five minutes. Or, like clockwork, the dreaded, “Daddd--yyyy, coommmeee wipe me.”

Yes, she does it in a sing-song way.

Last night, in the middle of a Criminal Minds playback, Tyson, who isn’t potty trained and shows no interest, asked if he could pee on the potty. This necessitated in a 15-minute break from the show to watch Tyson NOT pee because he really never intended to. It was all part of the master plan the kids have to ensure mommy and daddy don’t stay current on The Middle and The Goldbergs.

Mind you, we actually only try to watch a show three or four times a week. Ninety percent of the time, both televisions we have downstairs are turned to Team Umizoomi or Little Charmers or some kid’s movie on Apple TV while we do parent things.

I get home about 5:30-6 p.m. Bed time for the kids is, hopefully, 9. I’m usually exhausted and ready to go down at 10. In between, dinner, baths, bedtimes stories, packing backpacks for the next day, etc. TV usually has to wait until the weekends or that rare weeknight when it all comes together just right.  

I currently have about 37 hours of taped shows on my DVR. They hang over my head like a guillotine. Will I max out without watching them and have to start erasing for new tapings?


Happened a lot on Time Warner. But Direct TV gives me more storage. Crossing my fingers.

My brother recently gave us some black-market gadget that allows me to watch pretty much every movie ever made. I can get movies that are in the theater right now! They may have Chinese subtitles or the sound may be a half-second off from the visual, but I get to watch Straight Out of Compton without going straight out of my house.


That is a nice treat for a couple who has not gone to a movie theater since Sydney emerged from Brooke’s birth canal four years ago.

How many shows have I watched? Well, I got half way through Black Mass. Did the FBI ever catch that Whitey Bulger guy?

And in Straight Out of Compton, I got to the point where NWA hit the airwaves with Fuck The Police.


That can’t go well for them.

That’s it. Two half movies. Not 2 and a half movies. Two HALF movies.

My wife, on a whim, picked up a RedBox movie while at the grocery the other day. We literally had to order our two children into the other room every five minutes in an attempt to get through it. We got about three-quarters of the way through and the DVD had a glitch, not allowing us to go further.

DAMN YOU, REDBOX!

That makes three movies in the past month where we have no endings.

When we moved into the new house, I signed up for Direct TV. They gave me a package with free HBO and Cinemax for three months. When that was up, I called to cancel. The customer service guy offered to increase my access to movie channels for the same price.

I laughed. More movies I can’t watch? Yeah, I’ll pass buddy.

At some point, these kids are going to be more independent and willing to play on their own. At least Tyson will. Sydney seems to need an audience for everything.

If they ever reach that point, I plan on catching up on a decade’s worth of movies and television.

Until then, if you see me, try not to dish out any spoilers on The Good Wife.

Melt Downs Here, There and Everywhere

Life with two toddlers can be interesting. You are always walking on eggshells, wondering what might set them off on a crying jag. They get upset at the smallest of things, but that small thing could result in you bolting from a restaurant and taking refuge in a car from the stares of a thousand fellow diners who wonder why you can’t control your child.

How do they make tears appear on demand? It is an unexplained phenomenon. How do they get so fired up about the smallest thing? They cry better than the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz. And how can they completely go insane over something as small as a sticker not sticking to their shirt?

I have two children who are as different as night and day. Tyson is mellow, laid back and a “good listener” when it comes to obeying mom and dad. Sydney is….well, she is going to read this some day, so let’s just say she is the, er, opposite.  The battles we are going to have during her teen-age years are going to be epic. If I don’t have a heart attack before then, it will most certainly come during one of her ginormous fits over not being allowed to stay out all night with her bad-boy boyfriend.

But they are two-of-a-kind when it comes to melt downs. On any given day, we have a couple of crying fits out of both of the children. Over the damndest things.

Here are the odd things that can make either one of my kids go into a crying fit:

Sydney

The radio not playing her favorite song.

A song on the radio sung by a man instead of a woman.

Me singing a song. (This brings others to tears, too….I just beat you to the joke you were thinking. Ha Ha.)

One of the dogs touching her as it walks by.

Any clothing item she is wearing, any part of her body, or any toy she is playing with getting even a single drop of water on it.

A sticker not sticking to her clothing. (She has even awakened in the middle of the night and cried long and hard to the point where I have to go in and settle her, all because the sticker she put on her pajamas before she went to bed is not there at 3 a.m.)

Going to bed.

Waking up.

Not getting to wear her Halloween costume anytime, anywhere, any day.

Her shoes being too tight. (Not too small, mind you. The same shoes she wore the day before and will wear the next day. Just on THIS day, they are too tight.)

The sun going down.

The moon not being visible at night.

Dinner time.

Her dad calling her Sydney Grace Gregg. (It is JUST SYDNEY dad!)

Tyson 

The dogs staring him down when he has a snack in his hand. (Not actually stealing the snack, but just looking like they might steal it.)

Anything other than Team Umizoomi being on the television.

The robot in Team Umizoomi swimming in an Olympic-style race. (No idea. But he can’t seem to watch this episode without cowering and crying.)

Not being allowed to push a desk chair around the house. (It might be a good workout for him, but we don’t need any scrapes on the wooden floor.)

Not getting to go to bed. (Unlike his sister, he likes to sleep. He is ready to go down about 8 p.m. and gets cranky if you delay.)

Sitting him in his bathtub seat rather than just letting him rough it alone in the tub.

Tearing his food into bite-sized pieces rather than letting him chow down on something that would necessitate me performing the Heimlich maneuver.

Not letting him eat the top of a crayon. (I’ve caught him with blue or green tongues more than I care to admit.)

That’s just a start. If I were to track the things that upset them to the point of anger/tears for the next six months, this list would be 1) as long as Kirstie Alley’s grocery list and 2) as crazy as a lunch date with Amanda Byne and Lindsay Lohan.

Yes, Syndey’s list is much longer. That is either because she is a girl, because she is older or because she is a drama queen. You make the call.

I can laugh now. But when we are going through these little mini-fits, laughter is the furthest thing from my mind.

Sydney the Arguer

Sydney has gotten to the age where she will argue with you. I find this really fun.

I’m an antagonist. A contrarian. A debater. I like to argue just for argument’s sake. I believe good things come from debate. You strengthen your position. Or, you change your mind.

I think my daughter is going to be a lot like me.

Her favorite show right now is Team Umizoomi. It is a show that teaches kids math and shapes. Don’t let anyone ever tell you TV is bad for kids. You find the right shows, and they learn a lot. My daughter was at a friend’s house recently and picked up a toy and excitedly said, “Look mom, a dodecahedron!” Yes, she knows what a shape with 12 flat sides is because of Team Umizoomi.

I must say, with some embarrassment, that until I overheard Team Umizoomi in the background, I did not know what a dodecahedron was. Or, I knew what it was, but not what to call it.

Now, I’ll be prepared if I am ever on Jeopardy and there is a SHAPES category.

Sydney has taken to giving her family members character roles in the shows she watches. She’s always the hero or star of the show. For example, in Dora the Explorer, you can bet she’s not Diego. No sidekick for her.

In Team Umizoomi, she has deemed herself Millie. I think Millie is the female in the three-person ring of math geniuses traipsing around Umiworld solving mathematical dilemmas. The other two characters are Bot, who looks like a computer, and Gio.

Tyson has the honor of being Gio in Sydney’s world, and Brooke is Bot. She’s even named the dogs, Vegas and Murphy, after the show’s villains, the Troublemakers.

That doesn’t leave a character for dad. So I am Umi-car, the car they travel in.

That’s right. I have been reduced to being a car. I’m not even worthy of a full cartoon character.

Of course, this is unacceptable to me. So, I have decided I will be Gio and Tyson will be Umi-car. When an episode is on and we play this game and she tells me I am Umi-car, I simply say, “No, I am Gio.”

This drives her insane. “No, Daddy! Tyson is Gio! You are Umi-car.” I’ll fire back that I am Gio. And it goes on and on and on, for nearly the length of the cartoon.

Fun for me. She can’t let it go, and I WON'T let her let it go.

But here is how I know my daughter is really like me: we could be hours away in either direction from a Team Umizoomi episode, and she’ll simply walk up to me and, out of the blue, say, “Daddy, you are not Gio, you are Umi-car!”

She is picking an argument. For no reason other than to argue.

A girl after my own heart.

This goes on in many of our conversations. “Sydney, who loves you the most in the whole wide world? Daddy.”

“No daddy! Mommy loves me the most in the world.”

She gets so indignant, too. She forcefully shouts back. This is serious business in her little world.

I can’t wait until she gets older. We will have some great discussions and debates. Hopefully, we will open each other’s minds a bit.

My wife senses trouble. She sees many clashes in our future. She pictures doors slamming in my face.

Maybe so. But I am going to have an independent-thinking daughter, who knows she has to consider all sides in a debate and properly frame and support her position.

That will contribute to her success as an adult.

At least that is what I see in my mind. Sydney may see it differently.

If she does, I am sure I will hear about it.