Supernanny Owes Me $50

I really like Supernanny. True, the kids are probably coaxed and staged. True, they do a lot of editing to make a "show". But, even knowing this, I still like it. It makes for a great vaccination for the "I want another baby blues".

Last night's show was a rerun, which was okay since I had never seen it. The couple on television had six kids and a father who was leaving for a year an a half tour in Iraq. The second youngest was probably about two and still using a pacifier and one of the things Nanny Jo wanted to do was wean her off of it-- in one big splash movement! No easing into it.

The way they accomplished this feat was by telling the little girl that the binkie fairy was going to come that night and needed to collect the binkies to give them to all the new babies that needed them. Surprisingly, the little girl agreed and they set off on a search through the house to find them all. They put them in a bag, hung them in a tree, and told her that the fairy would come during the night and replace the binkies with a thank you gift.

Now, understand at the time that I was making Short Person clean out the toys in her room. She has lots of toys that no longer get played with, but that we haven't weeded out because she's sentimentally attached to them. A few days ago, I finally convinced her that we needed to go through them because she was getting older and her playtime fun had changed. She likes Barbies and color books and polly pockets, and we simply have no room to store these new items unless we do some fall cleaning. Which meant that her ability to collect new toys was going to diminish.

She was watching the show with me, and somewhere in her brain the fairy idea just "clicked". Since what I was thinking was that she'd want a new Barbie and some Barbie clothes, a total cost of maybe $10-$12, I went with it. Sold the idea that yes, we could hang all these toys outside and the same fairy would collect them for the little kids that needed them and then leave her a thank you gift.

"Great!", she said, and enthusiastically set about bringing toys into the living room to go into the bag. "I know exactly what I want! I'm going to leave the fairy a note!"

Turns out she wants two new Leapster games-- Tinkerbell and Ki Lan (sp?) Total cost? $50

So now, I'm trying to figure a way out of the hole I dug, while still accomplishing the task of toy weeding.

*******

On another note about the same show-- and in no way am I making light of this scenario, which is way too much of a reality-- it was an emotional episode. The father, who was leaving for 18 months to a hostile country and war, was at odds with his teenage daughter. Unsure how to relate to her. There was a scene where they are finally communicating about the fears that they both had and crying.

Short Person looked at me and asked why they were so upset, to which I responded that they were afraid that the daddy wasn't going to come back home. Short Person looked at me and said, "Oh. I thought they were worried he was going to get dead."

*cough* So much for sugar coating the subject. Little too perceptive these days, I think.