So I don’t plop my 7 month old in front of the tv or anything, but when I put him in his exersaucer while I’m in the shower or trying to clean up the house, I think that PBS is a more appropriate back drop than other daytime options like General Hospital or Maury Povich.  I’d prefer Brody go around saying, “Elmo!” rather than, “You are the father!”

Needless to say, I’ve become familiar with some of the PBS daytime programming and I find it quite interesting.

One show that will catch B’s attention is “It’s a Big Big World” about some animal friends in the rain forest.  There are lots of bright colors, fun characters, music and singing.  That’s all most people would see.  Not me.  I can never get past the fact that the frog character is named Warts.  Seriously.  They couldn’t think of anything else to name the frog?  Warts?  I only think of a venereal disease.

I became privy to the Warts situation a few weeks ago and started to put my cynicism aside until I realized that Snook, the main character, always seems to be stoned out of his mind.  He speaks slowly, methodically, and is always sleeping.  The creators can get away with it, because he’s a sloth, but I know those production types and I’m sure they get super giggly about the fact that they’re creating a show with a stoner puppet (that no one knows is a stoner, except me) after they’ve smoked a giant doobie.

(Seriously though … the show is cute and the characters, stoner and venereal diseased alike, are endearing.)

Today I was in for a real treat when I turned on PBS to discover a show that B and I had not yet experienced, “Sid the Science Kid.”  Brody didn’t pay any attention to it, but it was the most entertaining 30 minutes of television I’d viewed in a while.  Check out this cast of characters …

There’s the highly annoying girly girl – To be highly annoying to me (a very girly girl) she has to be pretty terrible.  She’s always talking about fairies, doing cheers, and participating in other super irritating activities.

There’s the boy with ADHD – Sid the Science Kid was asking his friends what kind of pancakes they liked and ADHD boy came running up to them, jumping up and down, shouting, “Syrup!!!!! Syrup!!!!!! Syrup!!!!!!”  Later, inside their classroom, ADHD boy was bouncing up and down yelling, “I’m a bunny rabbit!! I’m a bunny rabbit!!!” while the rest of the class was seated for circle time.  This is not fabricated.

There’s the down-on-life gothic girl … She’s dressed in darker clothing and when Sid inquired about why his mother’s pancakes were runny and his dad’s pancakes were burnt, she stated in a very flat affect, “Did you ever think the pancakes are mad at the stove?”   What?!

I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried!