The Sims 2

Sofi's really getting into the Sims 2, it's her favorite thing to do with me now.

We got the idea because we were playing with legos and trying to build our house but we didn't have enough pieces. Then I remembered The Sims. We've made our family, including our cats - Cathy, Nermil & myself are totally recognizable as us - Sofi & Zoe not so much. And then I play, getting direction from her. A couple days ago the social worker came to take sim-Sofi away because she was failing school - and the quit button was disabled - so I ended the process and managed to save her. We started doing her homework then - and then real-life Sofi wanted to do real-life homework. So we gave her a sheet of paper and crayons and she made her Best Art Yet - she's gotten pretty good at filling large areas with color. She can also color inside the lines, when we get crayons at restaurants.

This is pretty awesome: most play I do with Sofi is somewhat mind-numbing for me--stacking blocks, playing very simple games, hide-and-seek, etc--but The Sims is a pretty challenging game, so trying to keep the family going and entertain Sofi with it at the same time is totally engaging.

But one thing we haven't done yet is make our own house - the starting family couldn't quite afford it. We'll have to work our way up to that.