For Christmas, Claire got a Dora the Explorer game for her Leapster, and she was suddenly all about Dora. It caused her television viewing breakdown to shift from primarily Blue's Clues to Dora (those two shows make up probably 80% of her television viewing, with the small remainder being occasional Praise Baby or Muppet DVDs).
This has had a funny effect on Will. While Claire had zero interest in tv (probably because we didn't really put on anything that would interest her until she was close to 2), Will is really curious about it. Whenever he wants the tv to be turned on, he'll crawl/cruise/walk over, point at it, and say "Dora, Dora, Dora!" (Although if he wants to watch something in one of the cars, which we don't allow very often, he will point at it and say "Blue!") It's also taught him the words "map" and "backpack", singing the theme song is one surefire way to calm him down, and he loves to carry around a Dora book.
The new found love of Dora has been really helpful this week - it's been really nice to have something to get Will to focus on during breathing treatments (he came down with RSV and was having to get treatments a few times a day). He used to be a crying mess during the treatments, but now we just start the show, and he willingly sits in my lap without fighting the mask - except during the "Swiper, no swiping!" part of the song when he needs to vigorously wave his arm around like his big sister.
I definitely think there are worse shows for the kids to be attached to - I like that Claire really follows the story and plays along with the logic games during the show, besides helping Will learn some new words. And, there are usually two new episodes almost every day, so there's almost always a fresh episode on the DVR to keep me from going crazy. I guess Dora can stick around for now.
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