10 YouTube channels for babies and toddlers

This week has been full of trips to the bathroom, cleaning floors, couches, and car seats, lots of baths, and a whole package of diapers. Stomach bugs are the worst. OK, I can imagine worse things, like a dragon infestation or something. But stomach bugs are NO FUN. Especially when your spouse is traveling so you and your sick one are just there. Alone. With cats who poop on the floor in protest of you not cleaning the litter box every day while puking your guts out. Zero fun, Sir.

Last week, riding a surge of frustration, I decided to shut the door when I went to the bathroom. It was the first time in my 16-month old's life that I've done that when I'm home alone with her. I just wanted to pee in peace, alright?!  Well, she banged on the door, screamed, cried, and then all went silent. Completely silent. In the 15.5 seconds it took me to shut the door and sit on that porcelain throne, my attempt at a peaceful trip of relief turned into a frenzied panic, "What are you doing, Victoria?!" "Victoria, where are you?!" WHY CAN'T I PEE FASTER?

I launched out of the bathroom, pants down, toilet unflushed, to find my daughter had scaled the bedside table and was milimeters from her tiny fingers pulling a huge framed picture down on herself. She had managed to get her foot stuck inside a toy, and when she saw me, started screaming bloody murder. I mean, WHAT THE?! HOW DOES SHE?!

May we all find the perfect balance between rotting our baby's brains and finding our own happy place. 

I'm 100% confident you all have scenarios in addition to sick days and wanting to pee in peace that you want to occupy your Wild Thing (cooking is a big one for me). And that's when TV and YouTube become Mamma's best friend. There's that whole 30-minute maximum thing we are all told, that if we mothers let our children watch 31 minutes or more of TV in a day, we are surely, completely, entirely ruining our children's lives and brains and I'm sure "they," the people who do these studies are 100% right.

But I'm also 100% sure the people who released those study results have never been on a 16-hour flight with their toddler. Or been through a week like the last one for us. Because if They had, if "They" knew what a lifesaver TV can be,  They would have said, "You can't do this, but when we found that out, we spent even more money and hours of time doing additional research to find a suitable substitution. Here's what you CAN do to occupy your child while guaranteeing they will be nobel prize winners because of their extra smarts. So, go ahead, Mamma. You can cook a meal without involving the microwave or a takeout menu." But, They don't do that. So, when the experts fail you, and you just need 10, 20, 30 (or a forbidden number of minutes to yourself - we won't tell on you), here's a list of YouTube channels I have found most tolerable to me and enjoyable to my daughter.  Why YouTube? Because we don't have TV or Netflix or any of those fancy things in Dubai. Obviously Dubai is not a fancy enough place for such things. But we do have Chromecast and a computer, and on a good day our internet is working well enough to handle both at the same time.

May we all find the perfect balance between rotting our baby's brains and finding our own happy place. Good luck, Mammas.

1. Super Simple Songs - cute, cute, cute videos! This is by far and away my favorite channel to watch. Songs are well-made, catchy, and overall great. They don't crank these bad boys out as quickly as I (or my toddler) would like, but it's a fair trade off for the quality.  They have adorable original songs, loveable characters, and different artistic styles. They started off to specifically teach English to second-language learners, and I really appreciate the resulting grammar control and variety of vocabulary.  They have my favorite holiday songs, too. Halloween and Christmas are covered pretty well. This is also where we got our cleanup song we now sing for our bedtime routine every night.Some of Victoria's current favorites are: Who took the Cookie from the Cookie Jar? and What do you Hear? and Yes, I Can and Wag your Tail.   I wish I had the talent to return the favor and sing them an ode of gratitude, but instead I will just type, Thanks for being so awesome, Super Simple Songs! 
2. Little Baby Bum - Arg. Little Baby Bum is often the bane of my existence. My toddler loves these videos but they more often than not drive me BONKERS. The pros: lots of ultra-traditional English songs, constant additions to the channel, my kid loves them. Cons: graphics are not as good as some of the other stations, many of their characters drive me crazy (here's lookin' at you, Itsy, Papa Bear, the astronaut Ba Ba, and that creepy Bingo dog they started with),  and they use the same music tracks for multiple songs, so the obnoxiously simple melodies just sit in your head. Forever.  Also, since it's a UK company, pronunciation often drives me crazy (wheels on the BOOS? No. Bus. BUS), and they completely, utterly, totally butchered Yankee Doodle. He rides into an Old West town riding a British royalty horse and then feeds the horse chocolate? I can't even...  And, the kid who sings one version of "Mary had a Little Lamb" has a lisp or pretends to have a lisp. I don't fancy my kids learning that Mary is pronounced "Mawy."  To be fair, I have seen improvements in their choice for singers, and they also produce a lot of American English versions these days. Anyway, rant aside (thanks for enduring) the quality of the videos and music suffers, no doubt due to the rate at which they come out with new videos. But, really. Who needs 11 versions of a terrible rendition of Wheels on the Boos?
3. Baby Signing Time - The BST videos and the later Rachel and the Treeschoolers aren't videos we watch aren't from one channel, unfortunately. You can do a search, or FuntasticTV has them in a lot of their playlists. This one has been one of my favorites because the woman who sings them can actually sing (Emmy nominated), there are a lot of educational and original songs, AND it teaches sign language to you. So many good things in these videos! They are well-made and professional, too.

I wish there were more videos like [Classical Baby].

4. Masha and the Bear - This is a Russian children's series.  I gather it was inspired by an old folk tale about a girl who lives with a bear and gets into all sorts of mischief. Pixar lent it's talents to the team who made them, and they are top-notch. The channel has disolved into these not-as-good stories told by the main character. I would do a search on Youtube for original Masha and the Bear episodes. You can find them in English, or do as we do and just watch them in Russian. It makes us feel extra cultured (and some of the English dubbing is obnoxious).  The videos are adorable, Victoria gets very excited to hear the intro song, and there's always a clever "morale" to the story. Masha always gets into trouble, and the Bear is always having to re-evaluate his priorities and practice an extra bit of patience. I linked to one of Victoria's favorite episodes posted on Get Movies channel (they have a lot of the original episodes).
5. Mother Goose Club Playhouse - I like some of these videos, and my toddler likes a few. This wasn't a good channel for us until around the 13 month mark, since it's a lot of real people instead of animation.  I like that many of the props they use are pretty obviously made by kids, and they have a wide age range of kids involved in the videos. I don't like the rather unprofessional videos made by shooting videos of people reciting nursery rhymes in a room with terrible acoustics, but Victoria doesn't mind now at 16 months old. Our favorites are: Dinosaur Stomp, and Ten Little Dinosaurs (though the whiny backup singers get to me).

6. Classical Baby -  I wish there were more videos like this. Classical Baby has animated "music videos" to accompany well-known classical music. If there's one thing I don't mind having playing in the background while I'm trying to get something done, it's classical music. I would love to link to it, but Classical Baby is from HBO Kids, and they are very good at pulling their videos down when they find someone posted it on YouTube. Never fear, though. It will go missing for a while and then pop up again, posted by someone else. There are three "episodes" - The Dance Show, The Music Show, and The Poetry Show. Classical Baby is our go-to for our Sabbath and "chill" days.
7. ABC Kid TV - Perhaps not an aesthetic for everyone, I like this channel because it has videos of songs not covered by the others - American folk songs! I like being able to share songs like Skip to My Lou and She Will be Coming Down the Mountain with my kids. There's something very homey about it. They have John Jacob Jingelheimer Shmidt, and other classics that if I don't expose my children to myself, they will not be guaranteed to hear since we are out here in the Middle East - not that I couldn't live with my kids not knowing about John Jacob, but, tradition! Legacy! My kids are already at risk to not know a thing about how I grew up or the countries to which they are citizens, so every little bit counts! And the songs are done "right." For example, Take me out to the Ballgame has the classic old organ piping away. Just makes you want to go to IKEA for a hotdog and watch a game of cricket while pretending you're watching a comprehendable sport like baseball...

8. ABC Mouse - As far as fun music goes, I think ABC Mouse wins. They have a ton of original songs that teach vocabulary really well for all kinds of things like money, geography, etc. We like their songs for the seasons, and colors better than others, for example. I found this channel because it was playing on one of the planes we were flying on.  The music is really well done and I appreciate the complexity and old-timey style. Old MacDonald is pretty cute, for example. The alphabet songs are a bit beyond my young toddler's attention span, but throw this channel into the mix for something you actually may not mind having stuck in your head. 
9. Dave and Ava - Dave and Ava also get huge smiles from Victoria when they pop up on the screen. The music is really upbeat and modern. I love the way the characters interact with each other in the videos, and props to the creators for putting the kids in cute little animals suits. Very little anthropomorphic animals (all things relative, remember, when talking kid's stuff), and I appreciate that. There aren't quite enough videos to play through different songs, no doubt since it's a fairly new channel (6 months ago was their first upload). Our favorite video from Dave and Ava is The Phonics Song.   

Throw this channel into the mix for something you actually may not mind having stuck in your head.

10. Baby First TV - There's a paid subscription app for Baby First TV that has a few free videos each month. That's how I thought to look for this YouTube channel.  Overall, I am fairly neutral on these. I can't say I feel much smarter watching them, and the music is quite repetitive. I will say they are professional and polished.  While I find the crayon coloring videos to be the sort of thing that is likely killing brain cells at a faster rate than other videos (if I'm going to kill my kid's brain, I at least want it to feel like I'm making her smarter), some of the videos are quite fun for Victoria. She enjoys the peekaboo acorn video, and when she was younger, she really enjoyed the Looi the Cat videos, which I didn't mind, since the music is pretty peaceful. They had a very calming effect on her. Nowadays, though, her favorites are Harry the Bunny and  VocabuLarry - a parrot who learns new words. I have videoed her watching this one because she was laughing so hard. To each her own, I suppose...

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*Bonus!* Here are some random choices to also check out:
Kids TV
American Folk Songs for children by Muffin Songs
Albi Lumiukko (Albi the Snowman) - no words, and was great for 8-13 months or so
Baby Sensory Video - this one was great for her as a newborn. Not that she was really watching TV from the first stages, but this was a good way for me to break up the day when she was really young. Music repeats, though. Bummer, dude.

Now off I go to change another nasty diaper, because as you know, moms don't get sick days.