A New Game

Last week...

"Mommy, Mommy!!  I found these things somewhere where they're not supposed to be!" Jack yells as he comes running down the stairs.

I already have an idea about what he found and where he found it.  Darn, I thought I covered it all up pretty well.

A distressed Jack continues downstairs with his rediscovered possessions.  "Mommy, these were in the garbage can in the laundry room.  How did they get in there?"

He found a plastic ring and a stuffed animal that I think was supposed to be a germ, a "germinal" perhaps.  It was a freebie my mom (a nurse) got from a drug company and passed on to Jack.  In my attempt to get rid of random clutter and stuffed animals that seem to accrue exponentially, I decided that everyone would survive just fine without the germinal.  And I think we all would have, had Jack not found it.  I even tried to bury it in the garbage can under some dryer lint.

Some quick Mommy thinking resulted in this response, "It's a game Jack!  Although maybe the garbage can wasn't a good place to start this game."

"What kind of game Mommy?  How do we play it?  Can we play it right now?"

And so, the germinal became a game piece.  The game started out pretty simple.  I told him I was hiding the germinal and he had to find it.  And that was it.  So then we had to take turns hiding and looking for it at which point Mum taught Jack how to play Hot & Cold as he got closer or further from the germinal.  It then evolved that Jack needed a map to be able to find the germinal.  It had to be hidden and then marked on the map (also known as a floor plan) with an X.

And so it was proven again that one person's trash is another person's treasure.