Little EC has a fun game that she likes to play almost every day at lunch. She spells out the rules for me:

Baby says “Meow”, and Daddy says “What!”

So we play. The game goes just as you might imagine that it would. Until she changes the rules:

Baby says “What!”, and Daddy says “Meow”

And so we play that way too.

I think one day she must have, unprompted, said “meow” to me, and I responded with an incredulous “What?”. She cracked up at the tone of my voice, and said it again…and I, enjoying her laugh, repeated myself too. And now, it’s our own little game.

I’ve always observed older kids play with one another, and marveled at how they spend so little time playing, and so much time spelling out the rules or the script by which they will play whatever game it is that they’re going to play. And I can see that in this house it’s starting now, at two years old.