Carefree Summer Days

The boys have spent a summer of mostly unorganized playing.  They have invented many games to play together.  Fighting games are always fun for them, but they play a variety of Batman-Spiderman-Superman, Star Wars, and hockey games.  Our next door neighbors have kids Owen, Tommy and Georgie's ages, so they are always getting together in the front or back yards.  James and I were laughing the other day as Darth Vader whipped through our kitchen, followed closely by a clone, or R2D2, not sure which (Owen, in his robot costume).  Sometimes I find an imprisoned Princess Leah in our basement, waiting for someone to come rescue her--I assume Luke--but Luke has forgotten and is off on another adventure, or more often, Luke has turned into Count Duku and is now the enemy.  Even Georgie will attack his own mother with a light saber.  Sometimes he'll offer me one so I have a sporting chance, but meanwhile he "forces" me with his other hand, so what chance do I have?  Sometimes I worry about the violent nature of these games.  Should I worry?

During the Olympics the games were more sports-oriented.  The sprinkler on the trampoline was a high jump, the mattresses downstairs were used for a long jump, the swimming pool became Olympic size, and the diving board offered so many creative moments for future Olympians.  There were some medal ceremonies and closing ceremonies.  I remember when I was young I loved to make up routines on the trampoline and I planned to go to the Olympics in swimming, gymnastics, and I think synchronized swimming.  Oh yes, and speedwalking.  :-)

Another fascinating game the boys have created is "store."  It basically involves two stores.  One in the twins' room, one in Owen and Tommy's room.  They make their store look nice with a tablecoth (blanket) on the table, and nicely displayed items.  Then the shoppers come with their wallets (real money) and purchase items.  James and I had to step in one time when Will charged Tommy a toonie for some used sticker book, but usually they are pretty fair.  James noticed that they were also leasing certain items.  Not sure how they figured that out, but it was a neat concept.

I took the boys and some friends down by the river the other day.  I loved watching them move from one place to another and invent fun things to do at each place.  First a rocky beach, then a huge pile of logs--they worked together to demolish one of the logs and were quite proud of themselves--then our special Ryrie Island, which was super fun because the water was so low in the river.  Then we found a playground.  At each place they kept themselves busy with sticks, rocks, and tons of pure imagination.  I just love watching kids do that.  When we go to the spray park, they play for a while, but usually gravitate to the river that is nearby.  They love to jump over it (its really just a creek) and throw sticks and rocks in it.  Another thing I love doing is just listening to them.  They are very funny kids.

So this last week we disrupted the carefree-ness a bit by instituting a job chart for the fam.  I wrote up a few lists of jobs for the boys to do and grouped them and then James made up a fun chart with pictures and so forth.  So WRO rotate between Garbage Man, Recycle Man, and Compost Man.  They also each have a dinner night and two dishes nights.  I have to say that I really enjoyed their presence in the kitchen with me this week.  There was a definite sense of teamwork and I got to have some one-on-one time with them (because no one else wanted to hang around for clean up!) which was really neat.  I hope we can establish this for quite a while.  Of course, my past experience tells me it won't be a perfect system, or last forever, but hopefully it will work for a while.  Tommy and George do the dishwasher together, but Tommy was complaining that he needs a dishes/dinner night, so we'll see.  The boys admitted that they kind of enjoyed having some structure in life and they even enjoyed practicing the piano again!!  Shocker.  One more week of fun summer, and then I guess it's back to the grind.  Will expressed it well,"This year is going to be deadly!"