Some questions

1) What is Isaac going to be for Halloween?

I don't know. If we can find a little toy hard hat, maybe he'll be a construction worker. He'd probably like that, at least for five or ten minutes. And he could play with the hat after the holiday is over.

It's strange how unenthusiastic I am about Halloween with Isaac. Holidays are supposed to be one of the joys of parenthood -- you know, seeing the magic again through the fresh eyes of your child -- and Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. I liked the candy, I liked the scary stories, and I loved planning my costume. But I'm not at all excited about planning his costume.

I'm sure I'll like it better when he's older and understands what's going on, and when he has his own ideas for dressing up. I didn't mind choosing a costume for a baby or a one-year-old, but now that he's two and fairly autonomous, I feel funny about dictating his alter ego. It seems odd that I enjoy choosing his regular clothes, but not his Halloween costume! I must believe that a Halloween costume says a lot about someone.

2) What about a Bob the Builder costume?

I'm uneasy about dressing my child as a licensed character. Isaac doesn't know who Bob the Builder is, so it doesn't make any difference to him, but I'd rather that Isaac went as a generic construction worker. Call me a radical, but I'm wary of children's television in general, and that includes media tie-ins. Also, from a costuming perspective, it seems like cheating.

(But Isaac got a very cool Bob the Builder birthday card from his paternal grandparents, and he loved it. When he opened it, he said, "I like trucks. I like tools!")

3) Are you ever going to let Isaac watch TV?

I'm sure he'll end up watching TV sometime in elementary school, as well as playing video games. Just because I'm a radical doesn't mean I don't recognize the value of pop culture. I also want Isaac to be an educated media consumer, so he can understand -- and resist -- its various unsavory messages. That means we're going to have to watch and talk about TV together.

But it's not like I'm making an effort to keep Isaac away from TV, you know -- it just happens naturally since Craig and I don't watch TV or DVDs ourselves.

So Isaac won't watch TV until he starts asking for it. I'm hoping he'll make it past kindergarten, at least, as there are many excellent reasons for little kids to avoid it -- which I won't get into, as this blog post has been preachy enough! However, did you read the recent study that found that "with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos"?

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Edited to add:

You know I'm kidding about being a media-rejecting radical, right? I mean, I may not watch TV, but I do read celebrity gossip magazines. Plus I saw every single episode of "Friends." That's about as un-radical as it gets.