Two Years of Parents and Kids Share Together: A word from Madeline Fretz

Aside from Sprout (of course), Yo Gabba Gabba! is one of my other main obsessions. Picture from 2020, the year I started this blog.

Madeline Fretz - Dear friends, two years ago today, I created a blog. Not just any old blog, one where you could share your pictures, videos, stories, memories, and whatnot of PBS Kids Sprout (now Universal Kids), the only 24-hour preschool channel that parents and kids share together for shows, activities, and adventure. I used the blog as a tool to link the children's television from when I was little to the children's television nowadays. Fast-forward to two years later. More than 300 posts. I've been spending almost every day of my life writing about a channel I was once scared of as a little girl, but am a superfan of nowadays.

As you found out in my Top Ten Moments post, a huge inspiration in starting my blog was the Sesame Place blog Big Bird Bridge, founded by theme park historian Guy Hutchinson. Sesame Place is a theme park in Langhorne, Pennsylvania based on Sesame Street. At first, I stole, copied and pasted from Big Bird Bridge (my first post was even a rip-off of Hutchinson's first post), as well as other websites, but rarely do so nowadays. In fact, some of my posts were direct rip-offs, I deleted them from my blog, with some exceptions. Even though Groundbreaking is a copy of the first Big Bird Bridge post, it's too special, that I don't want to delete it, and "Caillou Leaves PBS Kids," while a rip-off of a Dora the Explorer update from a Nick Jr. petition, is also too memorable to delete. Enough said. Sure, as a Muppet fan, I take inspiration from ToughPigs and The Muppet Mindset with series like "My Week" and "Weekly Character Wednesdays," but write them in my own words.

As I said earlier, there are more than 300 posts on this blog, and I have a few favorites I like to read over and over again (the likes of My Life as a Sprout Fan (obviously), CBeebies and Sprout, and even Overthinking It: Where are Star's parents? come to mind, amongst others). In one memorable blog post I've written this year, I discussed possibilities for Sprout's future. I feel like NBCUniversal doesn't do anything with the Sprout name nowadays, so I wrote about what they could do with the name in the future. These ideas may not happen, but, as I always say, "never say never."  Oh, and one more thing. Remember when I said I was said there should be a Sprout movie? Well, as I said in both my end of Arthur post and Top Ten Moments post, I contacted NBCUniversal and several people who worked at Sprout, so it could happen for real. If it does happen, I hope it's more Follow That Bird/Dora and the Lost City of Gold and less The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland/Barney's Great Adventure - have it be more of a family film and less of a kiddie film, have it be like The Muppets (2011) and throw in some references to the past for longtime fans. Another thing: if it does happen, as I said in previous posts, make the plot identical to my Sprout fic - have it be about the Sprout gang going around in essence "getting the band back together," a plot of many, many movies. Now, we don't allow or promote fanfic at Parents and Kids Share Together (as with other fansites), but still, I write about my fanfic to keep people in the know.

Being a Sprout fan, if not the world's biggest, I've experienced some of the best things in my life, such as that one holiday video message (thanks a lot, Steven), writing my fanfic and finishing my coloring book to critical acclaim(?), getting likes from my Sprout heroes on Instagram and my long-gone Twitter, them following me on Insty, and becoming friends with them on Facebook. I'm quite a lucky girl!

Lastly, I'd like to thank some people who made this blog a huge success. Special thanks to…

• Steven Binnig. Without him, the Sprout gang wouldn't know I exist.
• Everyone on the Sprout Discord server (I'm known on there as cbeebiesfan) - especially P09 Tech Guru Guy, Boomer (who thinks he's a bigger Sprout fan than me), Rolex, JaysonCarney, approximateostrich, and Peanut. They're all nice people who share and uncover their Sprout secrets and memories, and I'm lucky to have known them. Thanks a lot!
• PBS Kids Sprout TV Wiki for containing everything you need to know about Sprout. I'm quite happy I'm an admin on there now, inheriting the site from founder NeptuneID13 and eventually making the most edits on there. I also run the wiki's social media pages.
• Alison Clarke and James Fletcher, for taking inspiration from me and following me throughout almost my whole Sprout fan career.
• Jack (Rare Noggin Stuff) for uncovering rare Sprout stuff I wrote about here
• Julie Engel (ajskippytoes) for being as big a Sprout fan as I am, sharing her Sprout memories, and I even got to inherit her "Sprout-vent Calendar" on Instagram.
• Lillian Alexia, amongst other fans, for participating in my recurring series The Great Sprout Survey and When I Was a Sproutlet.
• Matthew Hiltner (Jumpman256) and Agent0042 for inspiring me to find the Sprout History Video (I haven't found it yet, but I'm going to one day)
• The cast of Sprout, my heroes, my idols. Kevin Yamada, Melanie Martinez, Stacia Newcomb, Noel MacNeal, Michele Lepe, Milton Barnes, Ali Eisner, Kelly Vrooman, Forrest Harding, Sean Roach, Brendan Gawel, Dennisha Pratt, Liz Filios, Catherine Missal, Carly Ciarrocchi, Darryl Williams, Tim Kubart, Kaitlin Becker, Emily Borromeo, Chris Palmieri, Donnell Smith, the list goes on and on. You people are amazing! Keep it up and keep reading this blog!
• Oh, and one more, you! You're the reason why I started this blog - for fans to share their Sprout memories and rare stuff. Thanks again for all your help.

Click here to read this post and weep on the Parents and Kids Share Together forum!