Watch a Moofee

After Paul was born and my in-laws arrived, Josiah's Papaw brought him a present, it was a Buzz Lightyear action figure. He was excited about it because it does the cool hand chop thing when you push a button and it throws something. But my in-laws gasped when I told them Josiah didn't know who Buzz Lightyear was. He didn't know because he had never watched a movie before. All he knew about was Calliou, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Thomas the Train, and Barney from the PBS station. So one day, after they had gone home, I desperately needed to get a few things done while Paul was napping so I said to Josiah, "Do you want to watch a movie that has Buzz in it?". He replied, "A moofee? What's that?"

So I put the Toy Story VHS tape in the VCR (ha ha ha, yes, you read that right, the VCR, bet you didn't know people still had those, ha ha!), adjusted the tracking (cause it's OLD and was being all fuzzy), and he plopped down in his rocking chair.

From the first second he was mesmerized.

Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
See the fixated eyes.
The mouth wide open.
The complete disregard for the world around him.
I murmured words like candy, ice cream, pizza, chocolate... and he never flinched... didn't
even divert his eyes away from the screen.

Look at his posture now.
He's been abducted by the brain-mushing movie aliens.
This was a bad bad bad idea.

Oh my.
He sat like this the entire movie and never moved.

I can't turn back time now. He's addicted. He's hooked. He wants to watch a movie every. single. day! He begs, he pleads, he even makes tears fall from his eyes. Why oh why did I let him watch a MOOFEE!?

Since that day, he has seen other movies, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Veggie Tales. He would watch them all day long, every day if given the option. It is amazing the power movies hold over toddlers. If I would have realized he was going to be obsessed after watching it, I wouldn't have let him watch a movie until he was 5! Oh well, what's done is done. So for now, every day I get to hear the begging, "Watch a mooofeee, please mommy, please?!"