COLLIN GEOFFREY!

Yesterday we had a minor catastrophe. We allow the kids to watch one show in the morning and one show in the evening (when I am cooking dinner usually). We are not huge fans of them watching TV, but sometimes you need some time to get something, ANYTHING, done (again, refer back to a much older post - never say never until twins). They actually really like TV. Sad, but true, if we say the word "TV" in our house magic things happen: crying children stop crying, badly behaving children stop behaving badly, mischievous children tearing apart our house stop tearing apart our house... it's wondrous actually. Collin also loves the remote. So much so that we gave him an identical remote without batteries. But he still knows, he will find the real one wherever it is - it's his mission.

Yesterday morning, when it was time, I said "do you want to watch your TV show now?" The normal sound of thundering feet was heard as the kids all ran to the family room. Ethan shouted "Yes, I do!!" Oliver said "TV... TV!" and Collin said "GRAAAA." They plopped down starring at the TV and nothing happened. The cable was not working. Seriously? Did I mention how excited the kids were, do you know at this age they don't have a lot of reasoning, can you hear the crying (them and me)? I unplugged it and plugged it back in - much like a PC it usually seems to work. And it did... at least partially. We had picture but no sound. NO sound at all. ??? I called the cable company who restarted it remotely, but still no sound. At that point they gave me an all day service call - which means we'll come whenever we please. Now, I should say this, on top of the crying in my house during this time you need to also add to it my aggravation with Insight over the multitude of issues we have had since getting our new cable box and changing our phone to them as well last summer. MANY issues. I might have been a little upset on the phone with the service person... I was clear my frustration was with Insight and not her... but that Insight better fix this issue and pronto!

In the meantime, I put in a DVD and it worked fine... thankfully... and the kids were fine with watching that instead. Crying ceased, disaster averted for moment. While the twins were taking a nap the cable service man came (no call... just showed up). He was stumped at first but then asked for the remote. He pushed the mute button and I said "it can't be that, we watched a DVD with sound just fine this morning" and he said "no, the TV is not muted." He got into the cable part of the remote and discovered that the cable box had been muted. Um, did you even know that could be done?! As I was asking him how that could even be done and why the office would not have had me try that before calling him out, I was thinking in my head: "COLLIN GEOFFREY!" I have no idea how he managed to do that, but he loves to push those buttons. He can find and get the remote no matter where or how high it is. He has a built in homing device to it apparently (after all it's not like we actually LET him play with it). The cable service man was very nice and showed me how to fix it in the future, but it was really complicated (even he admitted that) - just as it's complicated to mute JUST your cable box!! Naturally I was REALLY embarrassed to have a service person come out because our cable was muted... by us... specifically our 20 month old son. And yes, I felt bad that I was so mad at Insight that morning. Sorry Insight - our bad. And again, "COLLIN GEOFFREY!!!!!"