They found the Nintendo

When I was first pregnant I acquired a Nintendo 64. Yes, this was MANY moons ago. The kids have known of its existence for sometime. The pieces for the game have never all been in the same place at the same time. Perhaps they could find a game or a controller or the cords, but never all the necessary pieces to actually plug it in and play it. Until yesterday.

When they finally assembled all the parts, which from what I understand they have been hording all their finds for months, they demanded that I set it up. I still laugh about the way they hid the controllers, games and cords so that they could find each part and every time they found another piece they would get so excited. It wasn't like I was trying to make this hard for them to do, but I was too busy to look for it as well. When I would run across parts, I didn't give them to the kids.

I was making dinner when all the parts were finally together and told them they had to wait if they wanted me to plug it in. So, Mac, tired of waiting, figured out how to do it on his own. I was thrilled, my almost 9 year old is FINALLY doing something for himself. He won't pour his own milk, he wants me to cut up his food, and he doesn't like to tie his shoes. He CAN do all these things, he just prefers to be waited on. Yeah, so do I, but that ain't happening. But, apparently he can set up a video game player all by himself. I was pretty amazed, and he did it without crying about it too.

Anyway, once they got it going, the boys evicted their sister from the basement, and they began to play. They played together really well for almost 2 hours. It was pretty amazing. They both came up when asked laughing and strategizing about the next game.

I have some mixed feelings about video games. I think that it is better that they play outside. I think that they already have enough electronic gizmos and do not really require anymore. I have seen kids prefer to play games over playing with other kids. I find that really concerning, fortunately, right now, my kids will choose playing with the neighborhood kids or friends over playing video games or watching tv.

For right now, the boys are enjoying playing the new games, they are excited to play together and are not fighting. Since there are only 5 games that go into the player, I doubt that the excitment will last for too long. I imagine that soon, this will be old hat and they will find something else to do! But, for now, I will enjoy the new found commeradery.