They're not actually talking to you

Ever since last September, when my mother-in-law was here to visit, my daughter has been interested in riding horses. There's a stable about 3 miles from here that has pony rides on the weekends, so we try and take her there when the weather is nice. They offer lessons too, but not until she's 9.

Here she is with Happy the horse:
It was pretty windy in the field, but she was excited to get to ride all the way around.

Every morning, she watches television while I eat my breakfast and set up a few things for my work day. She watches mostly Noggin in the morning - commercial-free programming...except at 9:30 when she likes to watch Go, Diego, Go which airs on Nickelodeon. The show is a spin off on the Dora the Explorer show and features Dora's older cousins Diego and Alicia who work for an animal rescue. Since the show is geared at an older audience than Dora, the school-aged set, the concepts are a bit more complex. They teach them bits of conversational Spanish, facts about different animals, and focuses on the value of helping people (or animals). After Diego, since it's on regular television, there are about 3 minutes of commercials between shows. My daughter will say, as the advertiser intended, "Oooh, can we go to Chuck E Cheese?" or "I really really need a magic singing princess and her frog!" or "Oh. It's Baby Surprise!"

Right. The commercials aren't actually talking to you. That's what I seem to say every morning when this happens, but she's lost in some sort of subliminally induced nirvana thinking about how much nicer her life would be if only we could go to McDonalds RIGHT THIS SECOND.