Playing with the kids

I had some pretty good times with the girls today. It was another rainy, drizzly Sunday (both soccer games were canceled this weekend), so we did some indoor things. Yesterday, I wrote. I worked pretty much the entire day on my Ken Brett short biography for the upcoming book by the Boston SABR chapter on the 1967 Red Sox. It always takes longer than I think it will, and it's lucky it was a rainy day yesterday, as I could stay focused on the effort.

Today, me and the girls played video games for several hours. Lego Star Wars for the XBOX is a brilliantly conceived cooperative game, whereby the Star Wars episodes I, II, and III (yeah, I know, the wicked lame ones) are sort of replayed by miniature Lego characters in a Lego Star Wars world. And it is a blast to play with my 5 & 6 (soon to be 6 & 7) year olds. You can only play two play (mores the pity), but Adrienne enjoyed watching and offering up ideas while Rhiannon and I played.

We even made it past a level that had been troubling us for a while. It was a flying level, where you had to fly XWing fighters through a battle. It proved to be too tough for Rhiannon last time we played it, but this time we pretty much made it right through. Which meant we finally got to add R2D2 to our character library.

Because the best part of the game is when you go back and replay levels using new characters you've added. This "Free Play" lets you do just that - free play and try anything. So the two of us tried to solve puzzles in order to find special pieces, and score more points the next time through the level. They both offered up excellent ideas for solving some of the puzzles and it was, in general, a wonderful way to wile away a few rainy hours. I think maybe we'll watch Star Wars, episode IV next time, to give them a feel for the milieu.

Then we were able to get outside and play a bit. It was still kinda drizzly, but we had fun anyway. The big news was taking the training wheels off of Rhiannon's bike! She did excellent, a real surprise to me, as we just don't bike ride that much. But she worked hard and was doing a pretty solid job of riding around the circle by the end of the afternoon. I was so proud of her!

I also took the training wheels off of Adrienne's bike, but that was a much more mixed success. I got to exhaust myself pushing her around the circle, as I don't think she's quite up to balancing a two wheeler just yet. But it was fun to see them work at the next step in bike riding. I wish my camcorder wasn't in the shop getting repaired, though.