Madeline's new obsession. Hint: It's not Taylor Lautner.

Madeline has never liked sitting and watching television for hours. If she sits through a whole episode of her favorites, I'm pretty impressed. We've tried to watch some Disney movies, but usually she only lasts about twenty minutes, max, before she gets tired and goes off to play something else. I don't know whether to be proud that she's not a television addict, or disappointed that I don't have an effective emergency babysitter. Mostly though, when I hear stories from mothers who have to watch Cars or Tinkerbell twenty times daily, and I feel like may be better off this way. At least, I felt like I was better off. Because we found a movie Madeline really, really likes to watch.


Go figure. My daughter is addicted to Mary Poppins. We discovered this by accident one night when Madeline was screaming bloody murder but didn't want to go to bed. So we flipped through the channels trying to find something she might like, and there she was. And somehow, a singing Jane Andrews made a lasting impression. Now she asks for her everyday. "Poppins?" she'll ask hopefully. And then she'll sit and watch it with rapt attention for an hour and a half. An hour and a half. I was convinced her attention span was a third of that. And she only gets agitated once in a while, if it's been more than a couple of minutes since Poppins was on the screen. And when it's all over, she waves and says, "Bye Poppins! Poppins! Bye! Bye Poppins!" Repeat for about ten minutes. I was hoping she'd get addicted to say, The West Wing, but you take what you can get. At least I have an emergency babysitter. And I get to watch Dick Van Dyke dance and sing. I won't complain.