I have heard a couple of geeky groaners recently. Sam Ruby used &deity;, and then a colleague mentioned the “SIGCHLD interrupt”. Yowser.
A little in that vein, the second post in the “Life before and after kids” saga revolves around the shows that you have to record on TV, and what you get to see:
Before Kids
Ah man. I remember sitting back on Saturday, turning on the telly, and popping on a premiership football game. At night, I would kick back and do some work with Top Gear and The Daily Show. Even better, I think at some point, I would have time where I didn’t even know what to do! Wow :)
My telly looked like this:
After Kids
Now the world has turned. I don’t have time to watch football! I don’t want to show Sam that watching TV is a good thing, so we try to keep it off as much as possible. Of course, Sam still likes to watch his shows, which means we have this on the DVR now:
The good news is…. when my brother was staying over, he seemed to be able to watch football whenever he wanted. His kids were older ;)
The first piece was on Amazon Recommendations. For the other parents out there, what do you find?
September 9th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Our tv set is out of order ATM, but after an initial state of panic, despair and cold turkey our two boys, Carl (8) and Theo (5) have found other ways to waste time – surfing websites like lego.com or playing games on their Ubuntu box, head-to-head Mario Bros on their Nintendo DS’, playing with their Lego stuff or even old-school pastime like drawing, and they only *really* miss the tv on Friday nights around Disney hours.
Outside this momentary tv-less life, they pretty much rule the remote whenever the tube is on, but my wife and I don’t really watch that much tv, so there’s no genuine fight for it anyway, except when we think they’ve had enough.
When it comes to going to the movies, though, the before/after effect is definitely *very* present: I used to go out and watch sci-fi and independent movies on a regular basis, but now I hardly ever get to watch anything but kids movies. Don’t get me wrong; I really enjoy going out with the boys and Wall-e last weekend (it only just came up in Denmark where we live) was a blast, but I feel completely out of touch when friends or colleagues without kids talk about the latest cinematics. In 8-10 years they’ll be old enough to go see some of the movies *I’d* choose, but then they’ll be embarrassed to go with their old man. The joys of parenthood…
September 10th, 2008 at 1:05 am
http://www.uptoten.com/ is awesome – as I can let my 19 month old watch the songs, while I read blogs & check up on twitter :)
Other than that, its In The Night Garden – with Derek Jacobi doing the voice over and singing. Great music – and nice trippy opening credits :)
September 10th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
So true, I’ll add that I can’t even watch TV anymore, so I end up watching my few favorite shows (BSG, Heroes, etc) online at my PC. :(
My Tivo looks like this:
Curious George
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
Sesame Street
Go, Diego, Go!
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan
Raggs
Wiggles
Fruity Pie
I can’t wait till my kids are old enough to watch reruns of Thundercats, Voltron, Transformers, and Robotron with me. :)
My movie going life has been reduced to seeing movies every weekend in the Theater to seeing Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, and the few family movies.