The games

Another snew day! Preschool was cancelled, we went nowhere, we cleaned the house and made soup and had tea while wearing our Santa hats.

The girls are such a rumpus together right now. Look at them reading this look-and-find book, and Eleanor finding stuff but not pointing at it until Geneva finds it!

They have devised a series of complicated games to play together. A while back it was 'detective,' where one of them would hide things in the front room while the other one waited in the living room with a triceratops backpack and a magnifying glass, and then the hider (the 'thief') would hide THEMSELVES and then the detective had to find them and make them tell where the missing items were.

Then it was 'vacation walk,' where they would load up every bag and purse they could find with random toys and then go 'on vacation' into my bedroom and I'm sketchy on the details here because I would just let them do it while I hung out by myself in the living room for tens of minutes (wheeeee!). I know at least part of it included fake-sleeping, and part of it was playing 'up-down' on the bed (when one of them is standing up, the other one is lying down! And then they switch!).

Lately, they've been playing 'tap dance.' They each put on a pair of 'tap shoes' (i.e. shoes that they found while I was looking for something else. They are much too big) and, if possible, an apron on their heads. Eleanor will sometimes wear a belt of mine if she can find it.

Then they go 'tap' in the kitchen (this used to involve actual tap-stomping but is now just really aggressive jumping) until one of them 'wins.' Eleanor declares the winner, but she alternates between them so that it's fair. The winner picks what they do next, the options being: decorate their trees, play the Shopping Cart Game (a board game Eleanor got for Christmas a few years back), go on an Ornament Hunt (where they go around the house pointing out all the Christmas decorations they can find), or 'run crazy,' which I feel is self-explanatory.

The best thing about running crazy is that Eleanor has gotten it into her head that they need to clean up both the living room and the front room first, so that they don't trip over anything. 'Mom, where should we put this box of diapers!' 'In Geneva's room, please.' 'Ok!'

It's like Geneva made a leap in her ability to follow directions and Eleanor made a leap in her ability to tailor a game to someone else's ability and now they're off to the races (and sometimes having literal races).