Netflix announced that it has renewed a licensing deal to keep a few key children’ shows in its instant catalog in Canada, after losing them for a few days.

I know you missed some of your favorite kids’ characters while they were away from Netflix in Canada for a few days but now they’re back. As we were renewing our license to stream Thomas and Friends, Barney, Bob the Builder and Angelina Ballerina they went away for a few days. All’s well now because we’ve renewed those shows so you can watch them again right now.

I’m Jason Ropell, Vice President of Content at Netflix and I apologize that these shows went away without warning. I hope that over the last few days you and your family were able to enjoy some of the wide variety of other great kids’ TV shows and movies on Netflix. But I do know what it’s like when your kids can’t find their favorite show, so I’m happy to say if Bob, or Barney, or Thomas , or Angelina are your kid’s favorite…they are back!

Children’s programming is an important part of Netflix’s content library, and is sure to be a factor for any member who has kids – and anyone who has kids knows that they can be picky about the things they want to watch. Meanwhile, Netflix has been making its children’s content more accessible. Earlier this month, they launched their “Just For Kids” offering on PS3.

Netflix’s streaming service (which is essentially the future of Netflix) is only as good as the content it has available, and as we saw when it lost its deal with Starz, the service can be impacted greatly by any one deal. Luckily Netflix has been able to make other key deals to counter that loss. The Starz deal had included a lot of the more popular movies the streaming service had to offer.

Netflix is smart to get more into original and exclusive content, which appears to be where the company is truly betting (in addition to the streaming over DVD model, for the long term). Its first original show, Lilyhammer has already debuted, and it’s got more original (and resurrected) shows in the pipelines. Eli Roth’s Hemlock Grove (no doubt, a far cry from Thomas And Friends), for example, is expected to hit Netflix next year.