Open up your eyes.....

I haven't blogged in a couple weeks because we had our cable & internet interrupted.
Apparently that's what happens when you only pay about 1/2 of your bill for several months in a row.
Who knew?

When I was younger, up until about age 21 in fact, I barely watched TV at all.
I didn't really start going online until around then, too. But in the last 8+ years since my I became a stay at home mom, I've become a TV addict.
My husband & I actually plan things around what TV show is on, and that's totally fine but this was a DAILY occurrence, not some weekly program that came on after the kids went to bed, but something we'd do all dang day if we could.

The first day we had no cable or internet, I thought the children might go all Lord of the Flies. My 3yr old was the absolute worst. She is normally so bossy and particular about what she watches.
The second she woke up in the morning it was "I want a PINK show!" (as opposed to a "boy" show. I don't know, she's 3, ok?) and I'd turn on PBS so she could watch "The Cat in the Hat" followed by whatever else would keep her busy enough to allow me to get some things done around the house.
Now, I'm a homeschooling Mom, so we don't really just sit around all day watching cartoons, but it seemed like there was always a TV on in the background, even if nobody was paying any attention to it.

Without the distraction of cable (the kids) or internet (mom), we were forced to find other things to do together. We played tons of board games. The kids helped make meals & clean up.We visited parks that we'd never been to. We took drives around neighborhoods we were curious about. We went to the library 6 times in one week. And I cleaned the house like WHOA.

When we had our cable & internet restored yesterday, I thought we'd all jump at the chance to sit on the couch like we are so often wont to do. But something had changed in us, in that small amount of time, technology had taken a backseat to the more joyous and honest activities we'd been forced to re-learn.
The kids did eventually watch some TV, but for the most part they chose to draw together, laying on their bellies side-by-side on the living room floor. Magic.

As for myself, I shooed the kids into their rooms and declared it "Mommy TV Time!" fully intending to catch up on whatever programming I had been missing. But even after I was sure they would not bother me and that yes, I could greedily choose whichever chic flick I wanted from the onDemand menu, I sat quietly on the couch, staring at a blank screen until finally deciding to join my youngest in a story.

Because, you see, every night for the last 10 days after I put the kids to bed, I sat in the silence of my home and looked around at what we had done that day.
New kids paintings littered the table next to a stack of board games, handmade sock puppets, and newly borrowed library books.
And when I lay my head on my pillow at 9pm every night, I fell fast asleep, exhausted from the actual, physical act of living life.

Though I am happy to be reunited with technology, it is the perspective I received from losing it that will stay with me.