Not Blogging Due to Club Penguin

I haven't had much computer access lately because the girls are on Club Penguin all the time. They take one hour turns pretty much all day long and whoever is on the computer is usually also on the phone or on Skype. Sometimes they fight (with each other and also sometimes there are misunderstandings with their friends) and have a hard time giving up their turn and sometimes I get grumpy over that or over the fact that they are here, but not really here. I miss them! (Woo-hoo! Way to be over-dramatic, self! High five!)

But, um, despite all that, I know they're getting a lot from it. They do all these amazing things with it that aren't really built in to the game. For instance, they staged this whole wedding where Harper's penguin got married to her friend's penguin and Saren's penguin was the officiant. They set up one of their igloos so that there was an aisle to walk down and they choreographed everything over the phone so that the penguins would do everything at the right time. Whenever there is a misunderstanding with one of their friends, and one of the girls is in tears and I start to think that maybe it's just not worth it, I have to remind myself that they are learning a lot about relationships through this. It really hit me today how true that is. A lot of the time when they try to work through these snags with their friends they'll say (to the friend) that their penguin is sad because of such-and-such. Oh, says I! They are using their penguins to express their strong emotions! Much in the same way that people often try to get kids to do with puppets or whatnot.

There's not much else I wanted to say. We had a playdate on Friday, Saren is growing up too fast, we played Risk with two of my brothers on Sunday, one of whom will shortly be leaving Las Vegas for Portland and whom we will miss, and Irina has finally broken through the 17 lb. rut she's been in for ages. She now weighs 20 lbs. Now I'm going to go watch Heroes.