Before we got married, Dan watched several hours of TV per day. I had the potential to do the same, but neither of us wanted that to be our life. We decided on watching one hour of TV per week and one movie per month. That quickly morphed into one hour of TV per night and one movie per week.
We each get one movie pick per month and one TV pick per week. We use our picks to watch something the other person may not be so interested in. The rest of the time Dan picks something he thinks well both enjoy simply because TV is more of Dans thing than my thing. If there is something I really want to watch, Ill suggest it and hell usually go for it.
The two nights that Dan works second shift, I could watch an hour of TV by myself, but often forget. I like The Office (or as Daniel calls it, "Michael") and Project Runway when Im in the mood to watch by myself.
When Daniel was around one years old, we started to think there should be a policy for kid TV time as well. We had a Baby Einstein movie that we liked to put on for him, but he was not as interested. He would watch for a minute or two, then move onto playing. We decided that if he wanted to watch kid TV, wed limit it to two hours a week, or roughly a half hour show each day Dan was at work.
Daniel doesnt want to watch TV, so I never push it. Sometimes hell suggest that we watch a Thomas movie tomorrow, but when tomorrow comes around, he doesnt ask again. Every few weeks when he says he wants to watch something today and I put it on, he gets tired of watching and goes and plays. I am perfectly okay with that, except for the fact that he doesnt like me turning it off until it has played the whole way through.
The kids are usually awake when we start watching TV at night, but quickly fall asleep. They then wake up for a before bed routine when the show is over and go to bed for the night. I know that is an odd way to do things, but it works for us.
Oh yeah, and this is all done without a TV. In the fall of 2008, my physics teacher from high school, Bob Crawley, was on Survivor (and won!) and I wanted to watch it on the TV while Dan was at work. The rabbit ears werent cutting it so I searched for TV alternatives online. We had Netflix for a while, but found that we didnt need it with all the other options available. Between hulu, YouTube, and our DVD collection, we have plenty to watch.
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