Thursday, 14th February 2008.

That was a long way to go just for the sake of a pun

Mantra for the day: the TV is not our babysitter. It's very useful but you have to keep a sense of focus and look on it as a useful distraction, not a parenting substitute. These days I try and ration Joshua's television time, but it's not always easy when it's first thing in the morning and I have stuff to do before work. The simple fact is I can't trust him to play on his own while I'm in another room - at least not at that time in the day - because the moment my back is turned he'll be gallivanting down the corridor to visit his mother, who needs her beauty sleep.

This morning, having been relatively organised last night and having actually managed to get up with my alarm for a change, I managed to get some quality time with both of them before going to do other things. We were playing in the bedroom and without any prompting whatsoever Joshua started reading Thomas a story, and showing him the pictures. "Look, Thomas, it's a panda!" Unfortunately when Thomas tried to grab at the flaps on the page Josh turned round so Thomas couldn't actually see the book at all, but in principle it was rather sweet. This then turned into a brotherly cuddle, which is actually more of a headlock. Sometimes I feel like a referee at a pro-wrestling match, except of course that pro-wrestling is utterly staged, while this isn't.

The washing up beckoned, and when Josh registered an interest in the TV I took advantage of it. He wanted to watch Mr Men, which I promptly loaded into the player, but the moment that Mr Happy appeared on screen he decided that he actually meant something else. I probed, and he said it was "the animal one". Great, kid. Nice and specific. Spotting the Baby Einstein World Animals DVD in the cupboard, having recently been viewed, I remembered his habit of hooking onto certain programmes for week-long periods, and came to the conclusion that he must have meant this one - but that wasn't the right choice either.

After much discussion ("No, the other animal one!") we eventually worked out that he was talking about the Muppet Show, of which he has become rather fond of late. I have a four-disc box set that is constantly being pulled off the shelf, leading me to conclude that some reorganisation is in order. There are a few on there that I'd rather he didn't see just yet, so I scanned the back of the box to find something suitable.

I picked out disc four. "Here we are. Let's watch the John Denver one."
He looked at the box and frowned. "It's not John Denver, it's Fozzie."

You can't argue with the logic. Fozzie logic, I suppose you'd call it.