Curious George Redeems Himself

I have not been a big fan of Curious George in the past. Nathaniel is strangely drawn to the little guy, so I've put up with him on occasion, but I didn't make putting the show on the TV a habit. I limit TV to a half hour to an hour every day and I'm more inclined to tape Thomas the Train, or Bob the Builder, or my favorite, Sesame Street. My main gripe with CG is his lack of speech. He uses squeaks and grunts to communicate, and while Nathaniel was learning language skills I wanted to use every opportunity to encourage his vocabulary development. Also, CG is notorious for getting into mischief and although there is usually a resolution and moral of the story at the end, I feared the misbehavior would be really attractive to a toddler. However, lately I've been getting on the treadmill for a half hour every day during Mary's morning nap and needed something I could really count on to hold Nathaniel's attention during that time. So I've been turning to CG for help.

That brings us to this morning. For his snack, I sat Nathaniel in his booster with a bowl of yogurt and a cup of water while I ran to the bathroom. As I was washing my hands, Nathaniel barges in and grabs the hand towel off the rack, and then runs back out yelling, "I'll clean it up, Mama! I'll clean it up!" I groaned, imagining yogurt all over my table and floor, but when I got to the kitchen I saw the water cup tipped over. Nathaniel expertly finished mopping up the floor and grinned up at me, clearly proud of himself. I stood there in surprise for a minute, savoring the sweet success and knowledge that I had finally taught my son to clean up after himself without my prompting. That was when he said, "Curious George spilled on the rug, Mama". And I remembered... a few days ago was an episode where the little monkey spilled on the rug, and then ran around the house devising ways of cleaning up the spill.

So much for my own patient persistence for months on end making him help me clean up any mess he made.

Maybe Curious George could adopt a sibling and learn how share his toys with her so I could get some help in that area?