tv'less

its been over a week with no television at the gregory household. we are t.v. free.

it was a long hard week but i am proud to say we made it. the first 2 days were the hardest. getting up at the butt crack of dawn with kids without t.v. is something i have never done in my 4 years of parenthood. usually, we get up and jude chooses a channel he wants to watch, i get him juice and cereal, and then i lay on the couch for about an hour until grets gets up and then i am finally ready to be awake for the day. needless to say our mornings without t.v. has been our biggest obstacle.

besides our morning t.v. ritual we really don't watch that much t.v. lately if jude is extremely tired i will lay with him on our couch down stairs and turn on something that he is not too interested in and after about 20 minutes he is out and its GREAT. please, jude nap time is heaven sent. if i am cleaning the house, on the internet, folding laundry, or just being a lazy mom the t.v. is usually on. {sidenote: jude doesn't really watch the t.v. he just plays along side it.} back before we got a DVR we rarely watched t.v. at night, between me working and other nightly outings we could not really watch a series without missing weeks, so we didn't watch it. not so much these days, every night we have at least one show that we {trevan and i} like to watch and hate to miss. jude has wound up loving top chef as much as we do! through out the summer we would let sir jude stay up with us and he would fall asleep on the couch watching our shows. i loved having my snuggly buddy next to me keeping me warm while watching our shows. it turned into a nasty habit. our once perfect sleeper who would go to bed after a few stories and some snuggles was now a terrible sleeper who could not fall asleep on his own, he needed the t.v. as a bed time story.

when dr. cramer told me that he thought we should cut out t.v. i was taken back. how could my babysitter {the t.v.} not be a good thing for our jude, for our family? i agreed to try it because i was at a breaking point and needed an intervention. i went all in in my efforts and decided that if it was going to work it had to be done all the way. the first day was hard, jude asked to watch it but reminded himself that dr. cramer said no t.v. and went about his day. he had tantrums that day and they were doozies. i mean a lot of the time when jude is upset or throwing a tantrum he will sit on the couch with his "silk" and watch t.v. to calm himself down. this was not an option anymore. there was a lot of holding on my part and a lot of screaming on his part. day 2 jude had 4 tantrums and still wanted to watch t.v. but we carried on. by day 3 jude's tantrums count was at 1 but without quiet time/naptime in 5 days he was really REALLY grumpy. greta had her physical therapist over that day and she was so exhausted that by noon she was down for her nap. i knew jude needed a nap and knew that there were 2 ways to get that done, a long drive{which was not an option} or some boring t.v. watching. that day he fell sound asleep on the couch after about 15 minutes of paula deen. i was a little disappointed that we had to resort to that but it is what it is, we made it through that day. days 4 &5 saw few tantrums about bedtime but other than that he was fine. today we are virtually tantrum free and with a very very few moments of t.v./movies i am proud of us.

the best part about this whole thing has been what it has done for our family. we talk more, we play more, we arge less, and laugh more. trevan and i talk more and go to bed much earlier than before. jude's imagination has taken off. he and greta actually play together. they played spongebob for 2 hours the other day and it may have been the cutest thing. ever. we listen to a lot of music and dance our long mornings away. jude has learned to make the most delicious scrambled eggs and has become an excellent helper. all because we turned off the t.v. i have no bad to things to say about not having t.v., it brought nothing to our family that we can't replace with laughter and love.

i think you should try it. if we can do it, believe me you can. its hard but well worth the reward.

let me know how you do.

p.s. i may be singing another song when the fall line up starts. we kind of can't live without 30 rock.