In which I wax Parental and a few other things

I was listening to Radio Free Burrito the other day (Wil Wheaton's podcast) and he was relating a story about his son and those times when you recognize parts of yourself in your kids. And that got me to thinking a little bit about my own kids and some of the experiences we had this week and so, for a Very Special entry here on letter 'd', I thought I'd take a very brief moment to relate said experiences. And then add in some of my usual ramblings. Feel free to skip to the end.

Anybody who has spent any amount of time on this blog knows that I am a gamer. I have been for a long, long, long time. (Longer than that) And while my current habits trend relatively highly to board games I spent years fascinated with video games. (I enjoyed board games while younger but it was the flashing lights and chiptunes that really held sway in my soul.) I never owned any sort of gaming console while growing up, but I had friends that had them and I also grew up during the glory years of the local arcade. And we had a pretty nice one for a small town. I relay this mostly to say that there is some bit (or byte) of gaming in my genes. It probably distilled from the engineer in my Dad into a techie geeky gamery goodness in me. And I have managed to pass that along quite nicely to G.

It's a little amusing to me to see just how deeply gaming is ingrained into G. We occasionally tried to get the girls into gaming as a family with things like Mariokart and so on but it never really took. They are the epitome of casual gamer, but G is a gamer in his very soul. And I find myself in the odd position of trying to nip some of it in the bud. Mostly because he's still so young. I don't want him to spend all day playing Link or Smasher Brothers or Little Link. So we had to sit him down the other day and try to explain that really, one game a day was going to have to be enough. You could see the wheels turning in his head, "One game? How is it possible to play only one?" And then there was the chin quiver and little tears. Truly it was quite the sight to behold. The gamer in me rallied to his cry, but silently and as parents we held the line. 30 minutes a day kiddo - you can break it up into smaller pieces if you want to play a couple, but that's all you get. If you help around the house or do something extra nice you might earn a few more minutes, but that's it. And that includes playing New Super Mario Bros. with us.

Truly a sad day in his little gamer soul. But hopefully he will use some of his new found free time on things like books and cars and terrorizing the neighborhood. He seems pretty good at that too. And it was pretty nice to see that bit of me reflected in his eyes. One game?! Indeed.

McK is starting to weave her teenager cocoon. It won't be long now and we will be faced with this pod person that we thought we knew that looks like her in some respects, but acts nothing like her. Lovely wife got her first real glimpse the other morning while trying to get laundry ready and the kids out the door for school. McK decided that she really needed to wear the exact same shirt from the day before and lovely wife had to convince her otherwise. Apparently World War III will be started over an argument concerning a shirt from the day before. I don't think science fiction has accounted for this yet. Anyway there was a nuclear meltdown and words exchanged in a less than civil manner and ultimately lovely wife resorted to some shock therapy. And once she left the room McK decided to take matters out on poor M caught in the crossfire. Lovely wife reasserted with McK that this too was unacceptable and nuclear winter settled in. Now at this point in the story you're probably wondering why I'm bothering to tell it. Other people's kids are at most cute at the best of times and typically awful the rest of the time. No the point of the story occurred after school. McK came home and all on her own apologized to lovely wife. Apparently at some point during the school day the haze of chemicals starting to course through her brain cleared some and she realized that she had made a mistake.

And she owned up to it. Truly a moment to be latched on to in what will be years of head banging, eye rolling, mind numbing teenager. It's good to know that in there somewhere is a kid that knows better and will do the right thing. I blame lovely wife. I'm pretty sure I'm not to blame for her good behavior...

Alas, I don't really have a story about M. She's pretty good at blending into the background of our lives. A little chameleon she is. Devious. But at least always willing to try new things. She discovered asparagus this week as we had some for dinner. She and G (and lovely wife for that matter) found a new vegetable they liked. Mmm. Asparagus.

So. Enough of that. On to important things. I'm currently working through Volume 3 of the Library Edition of Hellboy. And it is delightful. I'd like to frame some of this stuff and put it on the wall. I'm almost through Blood Oath. Expect a report soon.

We watched Zombieland again last week and it was still brilliant. This week we'll watch Moon and a couple others. I'm very excited for Moon.

I should also point out that I managed to catch a glimpse of the last level of Shiren. And then I died. So back to the drawing board. I will get this sorted...

And I think that about wraps it up. Go check out The Sound Test. It's great.