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Part of being a parent is, of course, being re-emerged in the world of Kiddie Stuff. Songs long forgotten have to be relearned, and sung, and sung, and sung. Stuffed animals, and cars, and blocks, and crayons litter the house and are part of our daily lives. Not to mention Children's Programming.

As an arachnophobe, singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider makes my skin crawl. But I suffer through, because it's Cora's favorite song. (Her godfather was singing it to her over the phone the other night, and she was singing along. It was quite cute.) The other thing that makes my skin crawl? Elmo. That thing is creepy as all hell.

Cora hadn't even seen Sesame Street yet, but the daycare has an Elmo doll that the children worship and burn sacrifices in homage to play with. If she catches sight of it on the way out the door, she points to it and says, "ELMO!" Finally we decided since she likes letters and numbers so much (and Elmo), that we should start letting her watch Sesame Street. Then came the Elmo books. The Elmo videos. And the Elmo doll (although I refuse to buy the evil possessed one that cackles). So, it's all Elmo, all the time here. Eek.

Don't get me wrong, I grew up with Sesame Street. I loved Big Bird, Maria is probably the reason I had an interest in learning Spanish as a child, and I remember being immensely sad because Mr. Hooper died. People criticize kids watching so much TV, but I was an early reader, no doubt in part because of shows like Sesame Street. And one of my favorite memories as an adult was a night in grad school when we were all out drinking and trying to get our Russian classmate to "do the Count" and say "TWO, ah ah ah!" and he kept getting the "ah ah ah" wrong. "Ah, AH, ah, ah." "Ah, ah, AH, ah." It's undeniably an important part of our pop culture, even as adults.

But even if Elmo is a bit much, I do get a bit of a kick out of watching it now with Cora. Maria's "daughter" Gaby is all grown up and not much younger than me. There are several new characters (including Elmo). The purple latina sheep cracks my shit up, I dunno why. And there are some really awesome guest stars. NPH as the Shoe Fairy? Effin' awesome. Then there was Kim Cattrall on there, teaching kids the word "fabulous" and how to use it. ("Having cosmopolitans with my girlfriends after screwing a man half my age is fabulous!" was sadly omitted.) So, the kid stuff ain't all bad. Yet.

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