Friday, December 29, 2006

On the Third and Fourth Day of Christmas...

...my true love gave to me, four needle sticks, three game controllers,

two duelling dog lovers, and my health and some sanity.

Four Needle Sticks

It's baaaaack! Gestational diabetes, that is. I thought perhaps I would escape this fate, as it did not rear its ugly head when I was pregnant with Tony, but alas I have not. I miserably failed my screening test and am dutifully turning myself into a pin cushion by testing my blood sugar four times a day.

Really, it isn't that bad. I have done this before (controlled the condition with diet alone) and I can do it again. It's just like giving up sweets for Lent, except a few weeks longer. Is it wrong to consider this a pre-offering for Lent and skip the giving up of sweets when Lent actually begins? Since Lent begins right about the time I am due to deliver, it would be a total of 16 weeks with no sugar, and I am not certain I can do this, especially immediately postpartum when I most crave sugar. That would be superhuman for a sweet-a-holic like me. Maybe I can give up something else this year. Like pregnancy.

Three Game Controllers

We are currently visiting friends who have a Game Cube. We don't have video games (not on principal, just haven't ever gotten around to it), so needless to say my kids are transfixed. This system happens to have four controllers, so many of the kids can play at once. Except Tony carried one off and we haven't yet uncovered it, so for now we have three.

The kids we are visiting got a new game for Christmas rated T for Teen instead of E for Everyone. When they asked if they could play it I replied that I had to watch for awhile to see how appropriate it was for my younger children. The game is some variation of Super Mario Brothers where the characters beat each other up.

I grew up in the 80s playing some Karate Champ game where "real people" tried to best each other with kicks and hand chops. I loved that game, and at first blush this game fondly reminded me of that one (although I would not now let my younger kids play that one since the people are "real"). But as I generally try to keep the kids away from anything at all blatantly violent, I watched carefully to see how this one would play out.

About three minutes into it I was laughing so hard I almost fell off the couch. The characters are not real people, they are Super Mario cartoon characters ranging from Donkey Kong to some fire breathing turtle thing. There is also a princess that kicks high like a can-can dancer in her ball gown. I watched my sweet Lindsey, the fire breathing turtle, attack my monkey older son and take him down completely. For some reason, this was so incongruously funny to me that I could not stop laughing. When another player, the princess, came and kicked the fire breathing turtle off the flying ship with a swoosh of her ball gown, I almost lost it.

I let the kids play.

When my friend came home I learned that she had asked her husband to return this game because of it's violent nature. Oops. Just goes to show how subjective parenting rules can be, even between families that share the same values.

1 comment:

Michelle said...

Sorry about the gestational diabetes. I've never had it, but twice I've had to take the *long* test. I could go the 4 months without sugar - but the sticking myself 4 times a day...that would be hard.