Okay, I'll admit it

I’m just going to come right out with it today; I don’t like playing cars with my children. I also don’t like playing random dialogue games with people-like toy figures. I especially don’t like having to come up with random dialogue for the people-like figures. The Boy used to be so self-sufficient. He would entertain himself for long minutes without intervention from a parent; now that he has a built-in playmate for a sister he seems to need more intervention. I thought The Girl was supposed to cure us of actually having to interact with our children. Damn. I was wrong. It seems as though the presence of a playmate has just further hastened the idea that The Boy needs an accomplice to his play. I try my best to play with the kids, but I typically end up bored after less than five minutes. What is worse is that The Boy gets mad at me for “playing wrong.” I mean sometimes if you just make Doc and Ramon say the “wrong” things The Boy is sent into a tizzy. God forbid if you don’t follow Mack and Lightning McQueen at just the right time, all while crawling along the floor on your knees, and do not ever just push one of the cars so it drives solo, that is forbidden! My new tactic is to tell The Boy to play by himself for 5 minutes and then I will play with him. My secret hope is that he will get wrapped up in his own play and forget about my promise (sadly that has yet to happen). I had also hoped that The Girl would be a useful playmate, but it turns out that when they play together one of them ends up in tears and something to the effect of “but she just took that from me!” is screamed at me. Kind of makes me want to have a third child, just to see how much craziness I am capable of enduring...okay not really.

Someone please tell me it is okay for me to hate playing cars.