BackyardigansBecom­ing a father incurs a lot of respon­si­b­lity and chal­lenges, but the most reward­ing aspects of father­hood out­weigh any­thing else. You notice that through your own chil­dren you’re able to become a child again and that’s an amaz­ing turn­around since becom­ing an adult means hav­ing to tone down or leave behind cer­tain aspects of your childhood.

Lately my daugh­ter Zoe and I have been spend­ing time watch­ing car­toons, mostly because at 15 months she’s start­ing to enjoy them moreso than when she was younger. Her favorite prime-time car­toon is The Simp­sons and when­ever that famil­iar Danny Elf­man tune car­ries itself through our apart­ment she’s imme­di­ately atten­tive. She dances to the theme song and then for the next half-hour (or 15 min­utes, thank you Tivo!) she just sits there qui­etly and smiles, occas­sion­ally point­ing to the tele­vi­sion and bob­bing her head up and down like a baboon.

A co-worker of mine shared with me that he enjoyed watch­ing a show called The Back­yardi­gans with his daugh­ter, Mad­die. He men­tioned that the show, which stars a bunch of computer-animated ani­mals (and one alien named Uni­qua) depicted var­i­ous pre­tend sit­u­a­tions like pirate adven­tures. At that point I pro­grammed Tivo to pick up on a season’s worth of episodes hop­ing it was as cool as my co-worker had described. The fact that it pro­moted imag­i­na­tion was an imme­di­ate atten­tion grab­ber for me since to this day I still tend to sway towards my cre­ativ­ity to carry me along, espe­cially when life throws it’s curve­balls.

To me, it’s a won­der­ful thing to be spend­ing time with my daugh­ter watch­ing these shows. It makes me happy to see her danc­ing along with the music and casu­ally glanc­ing back to me wait­ing for my reac­tion. Through her I am able to revisit cer­tain parts of my child­hood and that in turn makes me nos­tal­gic for the past but appre­ci­ate the future.