I must be one of those horrible parents who have the tv as a babysitter.

Mine is on all day, my kids come and go and watch whatever they want.
Yup, same. I have a 2 3/4yo who knows her alphabet, can count to 20, has a ridiculous vocabularly (that she won't use around strangers) and it just cute the way she sings along to everything on telly.

Right now she's outside, naked, painting the house with a bucket of water and a paintbrush. She rarely actually just sits in front of the tv watching it, she's always busy.

DD#1 on the other hand. Geez. We didn't have TV for years, we've been here for about a year and a half and as soon as she discovered ABC3 she just planted herself in front of it, hypno-toad style. Before that (yes, the several YEARS before that) she'd kind of hover around the house whining about being bored, ignoring a room full to the brim with stuff to do and a backyard full of all sorts of good stuff. Now she's long since given all her toys to DD#2 and just has books and TV. She has a computer too but all the games are 'too hard' and she'd rather watch TV on it. Blah ...