Spiderman, spiderman, does whatever a spider can.

Fixit has been letting the boys watch Spiderman in the morning. I don't approve, not because of the violence so much (although I'm not mad about them watching violence but hey, you grow two boys, you get less precious about this stuff) but because it's on a commercial station and I Don't Let The Kids Watch Commercial Television. Yes, I am the nanny-state. What are you going to do about it? The kids have the choice of the ABC or their impressive array of acceptable videos. (Thomas the Tank Engine & The Wiggles feature heavily in our collection.)

I'm really just repeating how I was raised. I grew up in Canberra and in my younger years there were only 2 channels to choose from. But even so, we didn't visit that commercial station much. My parents hated advertisements. And guess what? So do I! Qu'el surprise. Nell is not afflicted with this and had to be all sorts of alert when she lived with us, otherwise Fixit and I would give her dirty looks when she forgot to mute the ads. She reckons she barely hears them. And she's always telling me about this or that funny ad, and then remembering that of course I won't have seen it. So now sometimes I have to watch a funny one (Hi I'm a Mac or the pirate & the bandaid) so that I know what's she's talking about. She's my ad-filter. She tells me which ones are okay to watch.

I do remember as we got older and more in tune with peer group pressure that we were let off the ABC leash to watch shows in the 5-6pm slot, such as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Lost in Space and The Brady Bunch. After 6pm, of course, we wanted to return to the ABC for the golden hour of telly : The Goodies followed by Doctor Who. And I also think the rules had relaxed a bit more by the time my brother was 6-ish, because I know he watched Thunderbirds and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Anyway, back to Spidey and the dreaded commercials. Fixit is being good about it. It's all supervised. Obviously, it helps that he's getting a huge kick out of watching Spiderman too. He was muting the sound when the ads came on, but you could see the boys were still veeeeery interested in the commercials, so he has started flicking back to ABC Kids so that their little minds are not contaminated with consumerist longing for expensive, noisy and useless crap.

In the meantime the one Spiderman costume in our dress-up box is in high demand. No fisticuffs yet though.

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In other news, I made sourdough bread from the starter and recipe kindly provided by Pea Soup. I've never attempted bread before.

I feel like such an earth mother now.