"Eenie, meenie, miney, moe." "Do you even know which button you pushed?" "Sure! Moe!"
Abbie has always loved pushing buttons.* Give her a toy with a button, and she’ll spend hours in toddler time, or approximately 39 seconds in real time, pushing the buttons, illuminating lights, making sounds, and generally driving me crazy with its chipper songs.
Give her access to a piece of consumer electronics, and she’ll find its buttons to push for toddler hours. I can whisk most electronics to beyond her clutches. Phones are easy to move where she can’t get them, or at least where she hasn’t figured out that I keep them, because we really have so few places left that she can’t access. The television remotes can be a little more problematic, not because they’re harder to hide, but because they don’t beep furiously like a phone when Abbie mashes their buttons.
Then there are the electronics that don’t move. Abbie’s first such discovery was the television with its tempting buttons jutting enticingly at toddler finger level. We used to use a shield in front of the television to protect its buttons from poking fingers. That shield gave us a few extra months of programming enjoyment without fear of her changing it to a home shopping channel, and I could run to the bathroom and not worry about her turning the television on to MTV while I was gone. She eventually figured out how to disable the shield though, first by pulling it out of place and eventually by snapping it in half so we could never reinstall it. Now we just accept the fact that she’s going to mess with the television, either by changing the menu settings, especially the language setting, or by walking away after cranking up the volume up changing the channel to the most annoying thing she could find, usually a rotation of static, Telemundo, and Fox News.
Recently she discovered a new piece of consumer electronics in the living room: The stereo. It took her a couple years to find it because it rests on top of the entertainment center.** We moved it up there after she started opening the cassette doors and using them to pull herself to standing because if she broke the cassette doors, I would have no way to listen to my Phil Collins tapes.
Now our monkey has learned to climb onto the entertainment center and operate the stereo. I keep a couple children’s music CD’s loaded for music time, and Abbie has decided that music time is all the time. She’s discovered which button opens the CD drawer, and that by opening and closing it she can play music. She’s also discovered those funny discs that pop out when she opens the drawer, and that they can be a lot of fun to play with. Unfortunately she has yet to discover that fingerprints ruin their playback, so we get to hear the occasional rendition of “Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, (wham) Your Boat.” She also hasn’t discovered that putting the discs back in the drawer the wrong way seriously fouls up daddy’s stereo, and in turn makes daddy mad. Or maybe she has discovered that it makes me mad; she does like pushing my buttons.
* I’m referring here to the kind of buttons found on electronic devices, but she loves pushing my buttons as well.
** Remember what I said about having few places left that she can’t reach?
Give her access to a piece of consumer electronics, and she’ll find its buttons to push for toddler hours. I can whisk most electronics to beyond her clutches. Phones are easy to move where she can’t get them, or at least where she hasn’t figured out that I keep them, because we really have so few places left that she can’t access. The television remotes can be a little more problematic, not because they’re harder to hide, but because they don’t beep furiously like a phone when Abbie mashes their buttons.
Then there are the electronics that don’t move. Abbie’s first such discovery was the television with its tempting buttons jutting enticingly at toddler finger level. We used to use a shield in front of the television to protect its buttons from poking fingers. That shield gave us a few extra months of programming enjoyment without fear of her changing it to a home shopping channel, and I could run to the bathroom and not worry about her turning the television on to MTV while I was gone. She eventually figured out how to disable the shield though, first by pulling it out of place and eventually by snapping it in half so we could never reinstall it. Now we just accept the fact that she’s going to mess with the television, either by changing the menu settings, especially the language setting, or by walking away after cranking up the volume up changing the channel to the most annoying thing she could find, usually a rotation of static, Telemundo, and Fox News.
Recently she discovered a new piece of consumer electronics in the living room: The stereo. It took her a couple years to find it because it rests on top of the entertainment center.** We moved it up there after she started opening the cassette doors and using them to pull herself to standing because if she broke the cassette doors, I would have no way to listen to my Phil Collins tapes.
Now our monkey has learned to climb onto the entertainment center and operate the stereo. I keep a couple children’s music CD’s loaded for music time, and Abbie has decided that music time is all the time. She’s discovered which button opens the CD drawer, and that by opening and closing it she can play music. She’s also discovered those funny discs that pop out when she opens the drawer, and that they can be a lot of fun to play with. Unfortunately she has yet to discover that fingerprints ruin their playback, so we get to hear the occasional rendition of “Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, Row, (wham) Your Boat.” She also hasn’t discovered that putting the discs back in the drawer the wrong way seriously fouls up daddy’s stereo, and in turn makes daddy mad. Or maybe she has discovered that it makes me mad; she does like pushing my buttons.
* I’m referring here to the kind of buttons found on electronic devices, but she loves pushing my buttons as well.
** Remember what I said about having few places left that she can’t reach?
posted by Matt at
11:19 PM
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