magic boxes

I don't recall if I mentioned this before but who cares? Man, I just can't get over how much in love with the "magic box" Zoe is.
I mean, yes, Beth and I are both tv watchers. Avid tv watchers. We love our tivo. (I think a little more than we love each other.....) And when I say TiVo I mean Tivos because we have three. One in the kitchen that records news and cooking shit that I like to watch while I am in "my room" (and I am always in my room). There's the occassional smattering of regular programming as well, but it's not a sit back and watch the tube kind of place.
The living room is a dual mode dvr so EVERYTHING gets dumped on to that. And the tivo in the bedroom never gets watched but I use it to record stuff which I send to my macbook via wireless adapter. Shows that I can then burn as dvds or encode for ipod viewing.
Back to Zo.
She knows the sound of the TiVoi remote. Seriously. I think it's because i used to do the late night feedings and watch reruns of Friends and Cheers at 3 in the morning. The "bloop bloop" sound was something that Zo got to hear early. And now I had to turn off that feature in the kitchen because if she is in the living room and hears the "bloop bloop" Beth can't get her to concentrate on anything else. She cranes her neck to see if she can find the tv.
The same thing in the living room. She will stare at the magic box for what seems like forever even when it's off in the hopes that the dancing lights and colors will suddenly come on. And if it doesn't then she STARES at the remote. I swear she thinks she can turn the damned thing on.
I had to give her a broken, unused tivo remote as a playtoy. It's one of her favorites.
And it's the same with the ipod. To her it's just another magic box. It has sounds and pretty pictures.
And since we are crazy neurotic about what tv does to a kid's wiring we are trying as hard as we can not to let her watch.
But you know what? When she is screaming at nothing and wailing because, well, we don't know why, those times are few and far between, not often at all, sometimes plopping her in front of the tube and letting her watch a little Jack's Big Music Show isn't such a bad thing. Is it?
It's when she leans as far out of her high chair as she can and stares at the blank screen that I worry.