Old School Sesame Street

Yesterday we went to the library to try yet again the disaster that is toddler story time. I love our local library, they had a great program called lap sit story time that we went to all the time when Ellie was a baby. Then when she started walking it was time to move to the next group. Except she was distracted by all of the other kids who had snacks (which is against the posted RULES of story time) and I think she just wasn't developmentally ready to sit still and listen to a book in a room crowded with children. So as to not disturb all of the other children, I decided to stop going until she got a little older. Well now she's old enough and can sit and listen to a book but is now distracted by all the other kids whose mothers can't figure out that if your kid runs around and climbs under the chairs the entire duration of story time, perhaps they aren't ready for it. I gave up half way through when the woman in front of us (grandma I think) continuously moved around (to locate her charge who had crawled behind something) and kept blocking Ellie's view of the book. Seriously lady, you're like 6 feet tall and you sit in the FRONT ROW of toddler story time directly in front of the librarian - did it occur to you that perhaps the children who are not quite half your height might not be able to see??

Anyway, I needed to pick up my book club selection for this month and I checked out a few videos. One of them was Old School Sesame Street. I saw Tina Fey discussing this a while back on Conan because there's a warning that it is for adult entertainment (?) use only and may not be appropriate for today's preschooler. Conan asked why and she said that the kids sing songs like "Let's all go into a stranger's house" and such. I myself am all for that kind of lesson because strangers usually have the best candy so I disregarded that warning and popped the DVD right in. Well it's AWESOME. And I'm not understating it. Not only is Ellie really into it but I'm pretty much entranced. We're watching it and up pops Judy Collins with a harpsichord singing a song. Judy Collins is my mother's favorite singer, I grew up listening to her (and to this day love her) and was named Suzanne because my mother so loved her version Leonard Cohen's song by that name. Also on these DVDs' - Paul Simon and Ray Charles. It is such a treat to watch, and I'm really getting into Roosevelt Franklin elementary school.

Speaking of that era, around the anniversary of the moon landing, Ellie got really interested in this youtube video of the moon landing. It's very cool but I was looking at those pictures and thought, I seriously cannot believe that the technology 40 years ago sent men to the moon and got them back to earth not dead. There's a picture of the astronauts walking to their rocket (or whatever the hell it's called) carrying some equipment and it looks like they are outfitted with equipment made of old vacuum cleaner parts.