TV Troubles

It took us three days of spotty TV watching sessions to view the season finales of “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.” While it’s true that the “The Office” finale was an hour long and “Parks and Recreation” was two back-to-back half-hour episodes, we have two bigger reasons why it took us so long to get through them. Their names are Lucy and Isaac.

Watching TV is pretty much our only vice these days, and I guess it was just about our only vice before we had children, too. We don’t watch nearly as much as we used to, but thanks to TiVo, we manage to keep up with our favorite shows. But it isn’t always easy to watch them, even though we can queue them up anytime we like.

The fault doesn’t rest entirely on the kids. We tried to watch the Thursday night shows on Thursday night when the kids were sound asleep, but of course I fell asleep on the couch at 9:30 p.m. and didn’t wake up again until 3:30 a.m. Trying to watch them the following night was out because I had some work to do.

We tried again to watch the last 10 minutes of “The Office” on Saturday morning, but suddenly Isaac needed to yell at top volume while we were watching, despite the fact that we popped a bottle in his mouth at the start of a show. Then we waited until Saturday afternoon when he was napping and only Lucy was up and about and playing on her own, but then she needed to stand directly in my line of sight and to talk to me about her snack and whether I wanted some. Sweet and kind of her, but just a tad distracting.

It’s a wonder we haven’t worn out our TiVo remote. It’s pause button gets a workout to hold shows for various interruptions from the girl’s need to wash her hands (she can’t quite reach the faucet, even with her tiny stool to boost her) to the baby boy’s need to tell a loud, babbly joke that only he understands.

So the end of the network television season is a bit of a relief in a way. With fewer shows to watch, there will be less on TV for our favorite little interrupters to interrupt.