A History

When I tell most people that we do not own a television their reaction is very similar to if I had told them I am from another planet. Either they laugh like it is a joke, or they look at me like I am the crazy and spend the next few seconds fumbling over the thought of "how can someone survive without a television."


Let me first say that this happened purely by accident. We are not sans television for any political or religious reasons. Before A. James was born, we had television and cable. We never watched it. My husband worked third shift and didnt have time. I went to school, studied, and worked part time and didn't have time. We watched two or three shows and paid almost $70.00 a month. After a while, we started thinking that we could just buy the seasons of the shows we like instead of watching the old re-runs for $70 bucks. So we cut our cable off. If we wanted to watch something, we'd rent a movie or watch it on the computer. We would go days without watching someting. We started to realize how much more we were getting done and how much more time we were spending together doing something other than just watching movies.

We liked it.

Then we had A. James and sold our house and moved in with my parents while we tried to find something to rent closer to home. My parents love television. They have three and keep them on all day even if they are not in the room. We were so used to that silence. All the noise was very hard to get used to. Also, we had already made the decision that we were going to try to keep A. James away from television until she was older for many reasons.

We stayed there for two months before we found our own house to rent. We moved everything in. Including our T.V. The first time we tried to plug it up it didn't work. We pushed it out onto the curb, but a sign on it "Free T.V." and that is the k.end of the story. In it's place we put a 55 gallon fish tank. I think we are all much happier.

Random Ideas: Have a Book Birthday!

A. Jame's birthday is two months after Christmas. Plus one day.

We were still trying to figure out what to do with all of her toys a month before her birthday. I knew I didn't want anymore toys. She isn't a huge fan in the first place. She has a couple of favorites i.e., (water baby, naked baby, big baby, and little baby)--but the rest I'm sure I could give away and she wouldn't even notice. She prefers to be outside, draw, paint or read.

So I decided we would have a "book themed" birthday party and encourage guests to bring their favorite children's book or make a small donation to our public library. I was a little afraid that people would become upset and feel that I was dictating what they were to buy. However, it was exactly the opposite. The party was a huge hit. It seemed that everyone was thrilled with the idea of buying books instead of toys. The library even received enough donations to purchase four new books (all of while have her name inside). Instead of having lots of toys taking up space---we had a nice neat stack of books to add to the book shelf.

It was a win-win for everyone. I highly recommend trying something like with your family. Especially making some sort of donation in honor of the event, whether it be a Birthday, Anniversary or another Holiday it is a wonderful way to teach your child about giving and selflessness.