Congratulations! You've Just Played Your 1000th Game Of Hide N' Go Seek

We can't be positive but Patrick and I may have played our 1000th game of Hide N' Go Seek with Sophia today. The girl LIVES for the game.  She spends a good part of her day running from room to room shouting "Oh Mommy (or Daddy), Where's your Sophia Lou?" At which point she throws a blanket over her head and laughs hysterically at both her cleverness and the building anticipation of the "seekers" arrival.

That's right. She doesn't even really hide.

Just throws a blanket over herself and waits. EVERY TIME.

At first it was sorta cute and funny. You know, little kids, missing the point of hiding and all. But we made the mistake early on of pretending not to see her standing in the middle of the room covered by a little blanket. We would just go on and on calling "Oh Sophia. Are you in here? Are you in the kitchen? Are you in the bedroom? etc etc".

By doing such a good job at "overlooking" the uncontrollable laughter coming from under the increasingly smaller blankets, we inadvertently gave her the impression that either

A) She is a skilled and masterful hider or B) We are ignorant and grossly incompetent finders.

Along the way we've tried numerous ways to appropriately educate her on how the game is really played. For example one parent will hide with her (in a real hiding spot even!) while the other parents seeks.  One problem we've encountered with that method is that as soon the seeker calls out "Ready or not, here I come!" Sophia either starts shouting the exact whereabouts of her location or runs out of the hiding spot at full speed in an effort to "catch" the seeker. Evidently we need to clarify the differences between "Hide N Seek" and "Tag, You're It".

Despite the "joy" we get from finding her under blankets several dozen times a day there really is something great in seeing how much excitement she gets from the game. It truly never gets old for her and the reaction over being found is never dull. She is genuinely THRILLED each and every time.

Wouldn't it be great if we could all find so much joy in little things again? 

 

(Future Covert CIA Operative?)