Creative tag partners

Almost as soon as David left this week, I found out that I had made a parenting mistake of massive proportions. Not one that would hurt Elizabeth - but one that I truly regretted for me.

Last week, while playing in the backyard with David and Elizabeth, I got the great idea that we should teach Elizabeth to play "tag". She caught on quickly and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, she loved it so much that she has wanted to play tag every night since then. This wasn't too bad when David was home, since he did 1/2 the running and catching. But, when it was just me, and I had already been working all day (and had even been up 1/2 the night on the day after Elizabeth woke up with nightmares), I was plumb exhausted.

So, last night, I had a brilliant idea. I convinced Elizabeth that Scar (our cat) would make a great playmate for tag. She LOVED the idea. So, she expended quite a bit of energy trying to get Scar to play. For those of you who have ever been around cats, you will probably realize how utterly unsuccessful she was. The conversation went somewhat like: "Scar...you're it!....kitty!kitty!...no, Scar, you're supposed to chase me!...like this!...Scar! I'm over here!....Mommy, I don't think Scar knows how to play." I was cracking up, and I'm sure the neighbors must have been loving it also.

Well, tonight, we (read: lazy mommy) got another idea. We decided to involve Lyra (the dog) in the tag game. And, since the Scar experiment was such a riot, I actually decided to videotape this one. For those of you with high-speed internet and a little patience, here's the link:



In the video, it actually looks like it worked pretty well, but I have to admit that was the one and only time that Lyra cooperated. After that, she quickly lost interest. And, if you can understand her at the end, Elizabeth is saying, "Run, Mommy," because she still wanted me to run with her, even if I wasn't the one who was "it". So, this experiment also failed, and I ended up playing tag and enjoying every minute of it.

I'm just glad that David will be coming home tomorrow to take over his 1/2 of the running responsibility again!

PS - For those of you inclined to read this and insert your opinion that Elizabeth needs a younger sibling to play with, don't bother! I know that running in the backyard every evening is no comparison to the exhaustion that comes from staying up every night with an infant!