The kids and I have been playing a fair amount of hide and seek. They’re still figuring out that whole “hide” thing, preferring to jump out at me as I look for them, but it’s still a lot of fun. When I hide, I often end up calling out “Where’s Daddy?” very loudly to keep them heading in the right direction. This is both frustrating and fun for them. As I see them leaving the room where I’m hiding, for example, I’ll call out “Where’s Daddy?”

The other day, they added a new twist. Instead of just counting, they took the stones from a copy of SiegeStones (www.siegestones.com), spread them out on the table and counted them.

It worked out pretty well, until the game had been going for a little while.

I was hiding, and they were having a terrible time looking for me. In fact, after five minutes or so, they hadn’t even made their way into the room where I was hiding. I called out “Where’s Daddy?” a couple of times, and heard “where are you?” echo back.

But still no kids.

The minutes dragged by, with me sporadically giving my “Where’s Daddy?” call and them not showing up.

Finally, after about ten minutes of hiding, I went out to see what was going on.

They had made a long line out of the stones and were counting them. They looked up at me as I walked in, “Oh, hi Daddy. We were just counting stones.”

I’d been ditched by my own kids.

Even worse was that J was puttering around in the kitchen, and she hadn’t said anything either. All three of them were quite content to have me hiding myself under a bed while they went about their business.

Sheesh.