The games we play

Remember those months - no, years - of mind numbingly boring play with your children?

Oh, please. Admit it. The infant and even toddler years are something just to get through half the time. The payoff to parenting - if and when it comes - surely happens sometime long down the road, in the fuzzy future of adult offspring who don't stomp away and have a meltdown every, oh, eight minutes. 

Come to find out, there are little payoffs to be found here and there along the way. Right now, we are officially past the days of Hi Ho Cherry-O and Chutes and Ladders. We have moved on to games that I might choose to play with a group that doesn't even include kids. 

Caroline and John have long played our grown-up board games with their own rules, and a couple even according to the written rules. But in the last week, we've cracked the code on a classic: Clue. 

I relented to the request to teach them how this past weekend, much to the surprise of the wheedling midgeroos. We got it all set up, and I pulled out the instructions to read aloud, as it's been quite a while since I've played the game myself. 

Oh, yeah. It's a murder mystery. That I'm about to play with my six and eight year old children. Mother of the Year award, once again. 

The thing about kids, though, that all parents figure out pretty early as a defensive maneuver to save a shed of sanity in the face of the onslaught of never ending questions - they don't really expect a lengthy answer to any of their questions. Truth: they don't even have the attention span for a full explanation most of the time. And while I expected quizzical looks as to why I might suspect Miss Scarlet in the Ballroom with the Revolver, to them, it was just how the game was played. 

Let the playing commence!

While we've gotten past the games that suck my will to live, we've not yet gotten past the childhood tendency to want repetition of one thing for days, weeks, months on end. So we've played Clue every day but one since they learned the rules. We've even sucked Daddy in to one round, which he won in record time. Best game of Clue yet, by the way. 

Today was a snow day, which meant boredom set in for the kids in the early afternoon. I worked from home and managed to block out most of the noise, but at one point when I got up for a drink, I found the marathon board game session set up and ready to go. 

Not sure how that one came out, but we did get our nightly game of Clue in a little while ago. If this goes on much longer, I may have to reframe my definition of mind-numbingly-boring. 

For now, though... Whodunit?

Guessing Games

Constant entertainment - the goal of kids everywhere. Lucky for me, my two midgeroos do a pretty good job of entertaining themselves, taking much of the burden off of me and Justin. Guessing games are a an old standby, especially when we're in the car, as there aren't all that many options when you're strapped to a seat that's strapped to another seat, and unbuckling incurs the wrath of God Mommy.

Last night, Justin had the kids in the car, driving from Ash Wednesday services to IHOP. I had come straight from work and was in my own car, so didn't get to hear this little gem:

Caroline: "I'm going to think of a number and you have to guess it."
John (aka Easiest Going Kid in the World): "Ok."

Now, if you remember the universal rules of The Guessing Game, bracketing the answer eventually leads to a correct guess. The accuracy of your guesses is relayed with a variation on temperature: you're either hot, or you're cold. Or, in my kids' case:

"You're in the stove!"

"You're in the fireplace!"

This feels like a semi-dangerous game.

When it was John's turn to choose a number for Caroline to guess, he came up with my favorite response yet to an incorrect guess:

"You're in Antarctica. Without any clothes on. In outer space."

Caroline immediately protested that it didn't make any sense. Um, yeah, it kind of does. In an awesome and creative way. Nice work, little man. You've upped the Game.