We have TV

We got our TV turned on, or at least we got a dish system so we have local and other channels now. We went with DirecTV. It seems okay. I really LOVE the whole DVR system. It is great! I can watch a recorded movie that I recorded a different time, or record something while the other kids are watching what they want to watch, or record something for the kids to watch later.

Robert loves to watch Smallville. He use to be gone a lot on Thursday nights when it came on. He would normally miss it and I would forget to tape it for him. He normally ended up buying the episode on his iPod. Now, I have just told it to tape them when they come on and he can see them, we never have to remember to start recording it. And we don't have to try and watch it while we are putting kids in bed. We just watch it later.

With that being said, I have noticed that when we first got out here, we didn't have TV reception. We had our DVD player plugged in so the kids could watch movies, but that was about it. It seemed like the girls at first watched a lot of movies. Next thing I realized is that they were playing together more, Emily was reading her library books (A to Z Mystery series) to the girls and they were ALL loving it. Now that we have TV, it seems like no one is interested in reading a book. The TV seems to ALWAYS be on. I really am disappointed.

I did notice that there was a timer of some sort on the receiver. You can program it so that you can only watch TV at a certain time. It can be programed to only watch a certain amount of time (like 30 minutes or 2 hours) of TV or you can program it to only work during certain hours of the day.

The more I think about it, the more I think I might need to do that. I don't like the kids having total access to the TV all the time. Unfortunatly it seems like I am too busy to monitor exactly how long they have been watching TV, they turn it on and next thing I notice they are STILL watching TV. Meanwhile I have prepared dinner, fought with Amber eating all the candy canes off the tree, and dealt with Samantha and her teething issues.

I have heard of a family that did like "tickets" for the kids. The kids could get tickets to watch TV, if at the end of the week they turned in any unused tickets they got something special or money for every ticket. I was thinking the girls could even earn extra tickets for certain things too. Bad thing is I am super good at starting a new program but super bad at keeping it going.

Not sure what the answer will be for the girls, but I am tired of the TV being on all the time. I do have a rule that they can't eat and watch TV at the same time. (No breakfast and cartoons at the same time.) I do occasionally allow popcorn with a movie but that is the exception to the rule. When Robert and I first got married he would always eat dinner on the couch and watch TV. I hated it! I thought, why do we have a kitchen table then? He has gotten better, but still for lunch and breakfast, he is in front of the TV watching the news or whatever else might be on. It drives me batty! When we eat as a family, mainly dinner, he always eats with us, so that is good.

I guess after all this "blah blah blah" I could have narrowed it down to, we have TV now. On one hand I love it and yet on the other hand I think it was a bad idea! That would have made it so much shorter wouldn't it have!