BABIES

Babies. Do you know them?

Not just any babies, of course. The four stars of the nearly 2 hour documentary called "Babies:" Ponijao, Bayar, Mari and Hattie. We watch them all the time (it streams on Netflix).

ALL THE TIME.

At first it was just a little fun spying in on the lives of other ones--I mean, we even do that in stores! Dia gets so excited every time she even sees a stroller and shouts, "Bebe! Bebe!"

But now, she will sit through the entire nearly 2 hours of the movie. Actually, she stands. She stands at the coffee table (where my laptop sits) and watches, laughs, scrunches her face and calls, "Mama!" (at the interesting stuff) and "Maow!" (at the cats--the universal pet apparently). For nearly 2 hours! (Such an amazing attention span!)

For a family that doesn't "do" television, our babe sure does like documentaries. :)

Isn't it interesting the fascination we have with ourselves, though? We watch Dia's face scan every shot of that film, looking at toys, animals (sometimes an animal will be just out of shot so that she can only see a tail and she'll try to lift up the laptop or turn it to the side to try and see the puppy!), mamas and papas. She absolutely loves it. At Grandma's house she's seen cartoons like Clifford and even live action shows like Yabba Gabba (I think that's the name) and watched it for a few minutes or so. But never, ever has she been so infatuated with someting on a screen. She even asks for it by name: "Mama," (pointing to the laptop), "Babies?" If I smile and nod, she runs over clapping her hands and then holds her hands up as if to say "Where are they?" until the opening credits start. And from then on, she is glued.

To be honest, it all started with watching herself on Youtube. I post all of our videos there for our own record keeping and every once in a while we'll watch through them, all the time she's signing and saying, "More!" Well, one keyword search of "babies" on youtube and the rest is history!

Thankfully, it's made for some great teachable moments--"Oh, no! Did you see him hit Ponijao/Bayar? Ouchie. He/she's crying now. Oh no, that's so sad. Hitting makes us cry, doesn't it, Dia?"

Who knows? Maybe she'll be a filmaker like her Auntie Jess or Uncle Randy! Until then, babies, we're watching (and learning from) you!