Fifty Shades of Oatmeal

Kate hasn't watched much TV in her almost 17 months of being outside of the womb.  We typically promote playing when we are together since we are working on limited time with both Brian and me working full time jobs during the day.  The other reason that we haven't really promoted television watching is because I read that it's pretty much useless before the age of two.  Children learn WAY faster and SO MUCH MORE with a human to human contact versus a TV to human contact, so if we're going to use our limited time wisely, we are going to keep the boob tube watching at a minimum.

In light of this, Kate has been very interested in the remote to the television.  She knows what it does and loves to press the buttons.  She'll pick up the remote, point it at the TV, and press a million buttons!

(She has extended our screen, added captions, and put our wide-screen back to non-wide-screen format.  Most of these instances involve Brian fiddling with the same remote Kate was playing with for 15 minutes trying to get the TV back to the way it was.  How is it possible that she can push the exact combination of buttons to swap these sorts of things EVERY SINGLE TIME and we can't for the life of us easily figure out how to navigate the menus to get the screen back the way it should be?!  For the record, she does the same thing with our cell phones too.  We are thankful she has not yet swapped the language to anything other than English.  Though with our track record it is only a matter of time.)

Since Kate became interested in using the remote properly, I figured it wouldn't hurt to have something age appropriate for her to screen should she so desire.  I figured Sesame Street would be our first stop, so I began recording some of the new episodes so that we have a little stock pile saved on our DVR for rainy days.

Today just so happened to be a perfect rainy day.  Kate took the remote and pointed it at the TV.  I asked her if she would like to watch Sesame Street and she nodded her head yes.  I turned on the last recorded episode while I got busy folding clothes.  (Ahh, laundry.  One of the many weekend to-do's.)

The very first clip of the show was with Bert.  He was sitting on a bench reading a book.  The camera zoomed in on him while the birds chirped around him.  And he mentioned he was reading Fifty Shades of Oatmeal.

Bert's book image compliments of www.muppet.wikia.com.

Fifty Shades of Oatmeal?!  I literally laughed out loud!  Who knew Sesame Street was so entertaining?! Knowing the premise of the original Fifty Shades but seeing it in a much more innocent version gave me a little joy.  Hearing Sesame Street incorporating a current fad into their show, one that an adult would understand but a child would not grasp, was refreshing.  I can honestly say that I don't recall watching an episode of Sesame Street for a very long time.  From I what I understand, this is pretty common practice for Sesame Street. A learning show geared toward child but with the humor and current events that an adult would understand?  Know wonder they've been around for almost 45 years!

Prime Sesame Street watching spot: snuggled on the couch,
next to the dog, surrounded by fuzzy, soft, fleece-y pink blankets.
One can never have too many fuzzy, soft, fleece-y pink blankets!

And here's a close-up because she's just so stinkin' cute!

I'm looking forward to our Sesame Street lounge time.  I'm looking forward to Kate finding characters that she remembers and loves.  (We have several Sesame Street books around the house that she is already a fan of.)  I am even looking forward to watching some of the Sesame Street episodes snuggled up next to my baby girl! Especially if they incorporate silly lines like, "Fifty Shades of Oatmeal"!

Seriously!  If you really think about all the things you could think of fifty shades of, oatmeal is the most innocent and child friendly one out there!  And in the child side of my brain, it literally cracks me up every.single.time!