A Family That Plays Together, Minecraft Edition

As my kids have gotten older, adjusting to being a family that doesn't all live in the same house has been interesting.

On one level, it's not that hard because we've always been a collection of introverts who like each other's company. Which means we're all very happy to each do our own thing at the same table or in adjoining rooms. So if Aden is hanging out with us over speaker phone on Discord while we're doing other stuff, it kind of feels like she's still here and not so far away at college. Mona doesn't live here anymore, but is close by and has a car, so she pops over to say hi on her way to or from Target. Sometimes she'll stay to watch part of show with us, or help with a chore or two. There are days I see her more than I see Quinn who actually lives here.

One of the things that's nice when we're all together is to occasionally play games. I've written in the past about playing Settlers of Catan, but we also love Concept, Code Names, Cribbage, and when we're at the cottage, the family card game of Spite and Malice.

Quinn and I pair up regularly to play Boggle. We've amassed quite a list of words we know are playable, but struggle to remember what they mean. The ones we do remember we try to find ways to use, but it's difficult. (Some of the words on this list are RET, LAT, UTS, ETAS, COE, HIE, WEN, VUE, EFT, and HOB.) We have a lot of discussions about pluralizing things as they are "said by people in another room." Like, AHS, as in "We heard the Oohs and Ahs from the people in the other room." We've had many a laugh-filled argument about whether we stretching the concept too far, and we wonder periodically about those people in the other room. (I picture them just out of sight behind a ballroom door at a hotel.)

The funniest part about looking up words to see if they are allowed in Scrabble is there are some sites that think nearly everything is a word, some that exclude North America from using them, and one site that usually adds a line about how "This is no one's favorite word" which seems unnecessarily rude. Sometimes the Urban Dictionary pops up in our searches, and my all time favorite description of any word was for MER, which they claimed could be used in situations that were either awkward or not (which would be all situations?) and that when used in an awkward situation would not help. So now when there is an awkward pause I'll say, "Mer!" and then we'll agree it indeed did not help.

We also really enjoy family games like Jackbox, which involves interacting online, so we can include people in different places. (Our favorite Jackbox games are Quiplash and Split The Room.) Jackbox is online, but it's not a video game. My kids do enjoy certain video games, but that's never been a family activity. It's something the siblings do together.

But for many years now, like many people's children, my kids have been playing Minecraft. So much Minecraft. And there must be parents who play it too, but if so they haven't bragged about it to me. So Minecraft has not been a family game, just a thing for the kids.

However, Aden has been trying for years to convince her dad to try it. She thought he'd enjoy playing Minecraft, and got him to help build her her own server. Ian has his own projects, and thought it seemed like a chore for him to have to learn to navigate the Minecraft world, so he would politely demure.

But it turns out when I was talking to Aden when she was home over spring break, that she wasn't trying to get her dad hooked on a new hobby for his sake. She just wanted an activity that she could do with her dad. Even after I explained this to him, he was still reluctant to take on another thing, so I signed up for an account for myself with the idea we could maybe share it.

Mona walked me through how to move, build things, break things.... My only past experience with anything Minecraft was this very old video, and a quote from Rick and Morty describing it as "You're mining stuff to craft with, and crafting stuff to mine with," which about sums it up. 

After establishing a little cobblestone island within sight of the island my three kids had built to plant a garden and store supplies, I handed my laptop off to my husband so he could wander off with Aden to find me a dog. He was much better at navigating that world than I was, and the next day Mona convinced him to simply get his own account rather than share mine. Which turns out to have been a good idea, because he wants to do different things than I do. He's got a big mine with a glass ceiling and lots of safe houses to retreat to at night, etc. I planted flowering trees and make flower pots and feed my dog.

But the lovely thing is for us it is a private virtual world where we can be with our kids. All five of us, regardless of where we actually are, can all hang out and have conversations in the Minecraft server. And the kids are so sweet! I noticed fish in the water, and asked Mona how to catch them. The next thing I knew, she arrived at my place in a boat and put a fishing rod among my supplies. If I say my dog is hungry, one of the kids shows up with meat for me to give it. Once I drowned (I'm still not sure what happened) and I reappeared back at my bed but all the stuff I'd had with me was gone. Aden had been in a nearby boat and collected all my stuff where I died and brought it back to me. The kids make sure I have armor, food, etc. It's amazing to watch them move around in that space so competently, and it's funny to have the roles switched where they have to look out for me.

I love seeing what everyone makes. Mona walked me around her pink island covered with cherry blossoms and a second level that's nothing but torches. It's both hilarious and beautiful. Ian's structures are mostly glass so he can see what's around him. Everyone puts up weird signs.

At one point all of us were on the server at the same time, with Aden talking over speaker phone, and she remarked how nice it was to hear "home sounds" in the background (dog barking, Quinn getting up to get a snack, etc.). And when she left me building my house to go on an adventure with her dad and siblings, she said, "It's the dream!"

I don't know how many parents are lucky enough to have their kids excited to join them in their activities this way, but I don't take it for granted. Every time I log onto the Minecraft server, any kid that's on there greets me happily. They visit my place when I'm not there to see what improvements I've made and restock my supplies. We get to be a little family that mines stuff to craft things, and crafts stuff to mine things. 

If you'd asked me even as recently as a few weeks ago if I would ever play Minecraft, I would have just brushed it off. But I like making things, even in a virtual world, and I love seeing what my kids are up to. I love my family, and finding ways to be together when we can't actually be together is the best game yet. 

And now I'm off to mine sand so I can make more glass, and see what Aden's up to. It's a good night.

Entertainment Evolution

I'm often surprised when talking to my children how little I really know about their lives anymore.  We have such a tight grip on everything about them when they are tiny that it's hard to shake that impression of our role even as it changes.  I used to have responsibility for every detail of their days, and now they select their own entertainment, seek out their own books, enjoy inside jokes with people I've never met, and eat foods I had no hand in. Like most of parenting it's bittersweet.

But every once in a while I make a point of grilling them past the one word answers I'm used to getting and try to find more information so I'll understand them better.  Most recently I did that with Aden and her latest computer obsession and I learned a lot.

Compared to most of the kids we know, mine own a fairly limited amount of technology.  They share a single iPad that they got as a Christmas gift a few years ago from their aunt.  (They have about a dozen apps on it, which their friends with pages and pages of apps to scroll through find amusing.)  Aden has a laptop we got her with schoolwork in mind, and a DS thingy that I don't quite understand, but it wasn't expensive and she mostly uses it as an awkward means of creating her own animation.  A few months ago we hooked up an old Atari to the TV, and Quinn enjoys playing Frogger and Pitfall II.  We have Netflix streaming but no cable.  None of them own phones.

Despite this limited access to modern devices, my kids are well-versed in current video game culture.  Aden is obsessed with the Legend of Zelda and can tell you when the latest version of GTA is out.  My kids are all into Minecraft and make many small items in its image out of perler beads.

I've offered to my kids to get them a modern gaming system if they feel left out among their peers.  Same with phones, actually.  Just because something doesn't interest me doesn't mean I want them to be out of step with what the culture they live in is up to.  But they insist they are fine.  They don't mind sharing the iPad.  They don't need video game options beyond what the box of vintage Atari cartridges offers.

A Marbleous Idea

I read this post recently about using marbles to help kids manage screen time over the summer, and my first thought was that it was pretty much just another reward system like a sticker chart (which has never ever ever worked for us never ever).  But seeing as our summer was off to a rocky start in terms of too much Minecraft and TV and not enough doing basic chores without nagging, I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

Holy moly is the marble thing a good system.

Basically the way it works is one marble is worth 15 minutes of screen time.  When the kids do the chores they are supposed to be doing anyway, they earn marbles to put in their jars.  When they are ready to use screens they set a timer and "pay" for it by taking marbles out of their jars.  It's not so much a reward system, but a way of helping them balance out their time better between what they should be doing and stuff they know they need to monitor better.

I talked to them about it first to see if they were interested.  Quinn (who likes collecting things) and Mona (who already does her chores without being reminded) were excited about the idea.  Aden was wary, but agreed to give it a go.

Cake Wreck 2013

I'm officially declaring Aden's cake this year a big failure.  (Emphasis on the word "big.")

This is okay for two reasons:  First, for all those people who somehow think I can do anything it's nice to show I can't, and second, disaster tales are way more fun to tell than success stories.  So come see how badly cake making can go!

Aden wanted a Minecraft themed cake, and she decided she wanted it to look like a crafting table from the game.  I didn't know what that was, but found this (unfolded) image online:

Essentially it's just a cube with pixelated images laid out in a 16 X 16 grid on each side.  As far as cake shapes go, a cube didn't sound bad.  But our first mistake was deciding how big to make each side.  Ten inches sounded like a simple number.  (Heh.  Lesson one: Smaller is better.  Smaller may have worked.  In retrospect, eight inches tops would have been the way to go.)

My plan was to make a cube of layer cake, frost it, and stick pages of sugar paper on that I'd paint appropriately with food coloring.  Sounded time-consuming, but doable.  But then the store did not have enough sugar paper.