the wiggles have wormed their way into our hearts.

~ do you know who the wiggles are? four australian children’s entertainers, who originally started out as a rock band "the cockroaches", went to uni majoring in early childhood education, and decided to scrap education and become entertainers. and it worked. the wiggles, for those of you who don’t "get ready, to wiggle…we’ve been ready for so long" are a mainstay of children’s entertainment, booting baby einstein to the bottom of the cool-o-metre pretoddler crowd.

the babies LOVE the wiggles. therefore, i love the wiggles as well! baby einstein wasn’t enchanting them, so we popped in something with a little more panache …. and from the minute the first strains of "fruit salad, yummy yummy" hit their ears, the babeolas have loved the wiggles.

and all my "no tv overdose" high moral ground has melted away. the babies watch the wiggles, often the same DVD, twice a day. i have NO PROBLEM with this. i PROMOTE this.

Justification: the wiggles are educational. my children are going to grow up knowing that a wombat crawls, with his nose to the ground and is making lots of sound. they are practically guaranteed university places with knowledge like this!

and the impact of the wiggles lasts a LOT longer than the video. i can sideline a crying spell from carys if i start singing "quack quack quack quack, cockadoodle doo" or anything from the wiggles medly taken from their live show. the wiggles have given me long term smile ammunition.

it might be the groovy aussie accent (thank you tracey, thank you alice – i know, they don’t have accents, it is all aboooooot us canadians who have accents) but the wiggles, (after listening to them for over 200 hours i now feel i can call them by their first names…they are murray (in red) jeff (in purple), anthony (in blue) and greg (in yellow)) are hypnotic. if i wasn’t so grateful for the silence, i would be worried about my three staring happily at the screen, gurgling and thrilled and examining every hop, jive, and skip the fantastic four make.

I LOVE TELEVISION. I LOVE THAT MY CHILDREN LOVE TELEVISION.

if the wiggles ever are in the middle of a world tour and one of them falls ill…i could fill in. i know the choreography to every single song. and thanks to dancing along to "can you point your finger and do the twist" i have shaved a couple of inches from my waist. I LOVE THE WIGGLES.

it gives jasper, sela and carys extreme pleasure to see me dancing around with jeff, murray, anthony and greg. and occasionally with wiggles cohorts wags the dog, dorothy the dinosaur, captain feathersword, and henry the octopus (who does wear eight legged pants and does the tentacle dance).

don’t get me wrong, i don’t dance the whole video, that would totally ruin the POINT of putting in the video if I was entertaining them instead of the wiggles.

but towards the end, particularly during the wiggles medly (from their concert!!) i will jump up and dance along. and i take a big bow at the very end and announce to them, "mummy is a wiggle!"

mummy is a something, all right, they’re thinking. certifiable more like it.

interestingly, instead of escaping to my room with a book, i stay in the room while they are watching television. i love that they are so alert and captivated by m,j,a and g. as murray announces, "hello everyone, we’re the wiggles" they quiet in their bouncy chairs and lift their lashes to the screen.

and i laugh, because when they watch the wiggles, the wee three switch from being performers, to the audience. and they watch, and appreciate. they have their favourite songs, and are developing discernment. and as the lasers of their demands move off me, and demand entertainment from their four friends, i can watch the babies instead of doing their bidding. and they are so very, very, interesting.