Our Son, The Gamer...

I officially announce that our son is a genius. Now, I know that every parent's kids are geniuses (geniusi? what's the plural?), but I truly believe our son has some hidden brilliance that's just now surfacing. For one thing, when he heard I was going to the basement to get my and B's dice for our gaming group tonight, he wanted to come, too. I don't like him wandering around down there, so I shut the door on him. I wasn't going to be long. Well, I hadn't thought about the possibility of him getting through the new cat door we'd installed in the basement door. We'd recently moved the cat's litter boxes to the basement, and in order for her to figure out how to get down there, we had to tape open the flap to the cat door. While I was looking for our dice, I suddenly heard V crying at the top of the stairs, and it didn't sound like he was upstairs! When I looked up, I saw his head, arms, and torso struggling through the cat door! I don't know how he got his shoulders through because when I tried to push him back out of the door, he wouldn't fit. Luckily, he's got a skinny little butt, and I was able to pull him through the door onto the top of the stairs. I know he was pretty frustrated about it, but I really wanted to laugh. And, I really wanted my camera, but I figured I'd better help him out of his predicament lest he hurt himself. When he finally saw that I did indeed have my and B's dice bags, he started crying for his own "die". We have a card game with a set of six large 10-sided-dice that are used to keep track of hit points during the game. Since V is so interested in watching us game and roll our dice, and since he's avid about "helping" us roll them, we decided to give him the large 10-siders for his own dice (only to be used under adult supervision, of course; they're probably too big to be swallowed, but one can never tell!). Since he really wanted his "die" so much, I went ahead and gave him his little dice bag. No sooner had he opened it, he left the family room and went upstairs. I had no clue what he was doing, until I saw him come back down the stairs with his own "game board". It's really just the leftover cardboard from a new game that had a lot punched out pieces. He seemed interested in it when he saw us punching out the pieces, so we let him keep it rather than throw it away. He brought the "board" over to me on the floor, opened up his dice bag, and started placing his dice in random holes on the board. It was really quite fascinating to watch him, and though it looked quite random to me, I'm sure he was doing it very purposely. I didn't know the game's rules, but it seemed as though the best way to play was to put the dice on the board in various places, take them off, put them back on again, and do other things like pick the whole board up and tip it to drop the dice off or just kick the dice off the board. After he was all done with his game, he did what any responsible gamer does--he put his dice back in their bag. I was really quite proud of him and astonished at the complexity with which he seemed to think out what he wanted to do and how to accomplish it. He's just so amazing to me, and he changes daily. I love being around to watch it all. Now, I must go because apparently, he saw a swim diaper and wants to go swimming. It's too chilly, so I'm compromising, and we'll go "swimming" in the bath tub, instead. Here's a few pics of my son's game: