So since before Christmas Sam has been talking about buying a video game system, you know, for the kids. The kids that are newly 5 and newly 2. Something tells me, and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist here, that he wants to play video games. And that’s okay. Just own up to it.

As per my standard method of operation, I polled friends and family members who have Wii and XBox to see what they thought about the games and got the general feedback that Wii is more family, little-kid friendly where XBox is more bigger kid (including bigger kid-like dads) friendly. Which I dutifully passed on to Sam. After much thought his decision, which is much like his other previous decisions, was to buy both. And true to Sam’s form, that is as far as we have gotten. He has decided to buy both. When he will actually do so will be another story. We decided to paint Francesca’s room a long time ago and it’s still not done. Ahem, but I digress.

The other day, the kids and I came home from a Christening party to find Sam all set up with a video game hooked up to the tv. Upon further inspection, it was his very old Nintendo game sytem and Donkey Kong, in partucular, up on the screen. Ross is totally beside himself. He can’t wait to play video games with dad every day and has gotten really good at it - I initially thought he was way too young. I take it back.

We’ll still get the new game systems at some point - but what a great idea to resurrect the old video game system. To a child who has never played them, what difference does it make if the graphics are a fraction of what the new systems are? And it was free. Francesca jumps up and down and dances to the “music” as they play the game. With all the yelling and excitement, we have been having a blast.