Today, Catie decided to make my head explode with a new trick: she knows which remote goes with the TV and which one controls the DVD player. I kid you not. She brought me a DVD she wanted to watch, and I said, “Ok, but first I need to find the remote.” She picked up the silver TV remote, studied it for a second, then put it down and said, “no.” Then she found the black DVD remote, handed it to me, and said, “Here ‘mote, Mommy.”
Of course, then she freaked out because she brought me the wrong DVD – she wanted Baby Beethoven, which has a giraffe on the cover, and she brought me Baby Galileo, which has a kangaroo on it (same color scheme). When the movie started, she threw herself on the floor screaming, “Giraffe!!!” because she couldn’t understand that I couldn’t change the disc with a press of a button on the remote.
Still. She’s TWO, for crying out loud. She’ll be 25 months old on Friday. She’s a baby! The fact that she already knows which remote goes with which appliance completely freaks me out. Now it’s only a matter of time before she figures out how to actually operate the buttons on the remote, and then she’s going to be charging all sorts of pay-per-view movies to our cable bill. Next thing you know, she’ll be on MySpace and Facebook, and she’ll probably start sending Twitter updates from Dave’s iPhone, and oh my lord, I need an ibuprofen and a nap.
Baby E DVD’s are some of the best marketing ever. I doubt they really do a thing to help kids get smarter, but it “feels” like they might.
Elizabeth also knows which one she wants to watch by the creature on the cover. They must have known that going in. E likes to walk over to the DVD player and load the one she wants to watch. We have to make sure we don’t leave the last DVD in the player, because she’ll try to put the next one in anyway.
It’s amazing how quickly they pick up the technology, isn’t it? We’re struggling with the new technology and it’s like a second language for them.