Baby, It's Cold Outside

I am developing a crush on The Man With The Yellow Hat.

I realized this the other morning as I watched Curious George with Julian. I found myself feeling an all too familiar excitement when The Man With The Yellow Hat appeared and almost giggled when he reminded George to be a good little monkey.

You know things are bad when you have a thing for a cartoon. Especially when the cartoon is so aggressively geeky and not hot (although as everyone who knows me will attest, The Man With The Yellow Hat does have the two main qualities I look for in a man: height and skinniness. Add the fact that he is really nice to children and animals and you can see how this affection I have developed.)

Joking aside, I am aware that this phenomenon is not limited to me. I mean, not The Man With The Yellow Hat bit, but the developing a liking for the adult in a children's show to which your child subjects you. Steve Burns (of Blue's Clues) apparently got lots of dirty mail from nannies and stay-at-home moms while he was a children's television personality--probably more than he has received in his current career as a rock star (go check out his website. His music is really good.) He said in a nerve.com interview that he thought it was because people wanted to corrupt something which was innocent. I must respectfully disagree. I don't think the mothers who sent him naughty pictures were interested in corrupting the innocent, they were just sleep deprived and started wondering what that guy they saw for hours a day might look like out of the green striped rugby shirt and khakis.

It is amazing what lack of sleep and boredom will do to an otherwise intelligent person.

Now that I look at him, Steve is pretty cute (she says so casually, not letting on that she has actually seen Steve in concert--but he shaves his head now, he looks better with hair).

I read this to Fred and he tells me that I am not alone in this, that he is starting to find the new girl on Sprout's Good Night Show really easy on the eyes, but he was quick to add that it is only because she looks "so much" like me. "And Julian agrees," says Fred. (For the record, she doesn't look like me, Fred and Julian are clearly delusional, but hey, I have a crush on The Man With the Yellow Hat, so I am not in a position to criticize).

And to think, we actually hoped to limit Julian's exposure to television.