Woo Hoo

Rule #1 of parenting: Never promise your kids anything. Always leave yourself a way out. DO NOT COMMIT.

Rule #2: Never forget Rule #1.

Rule #3: Always do your homework if you're going to break rules #1 and 2.

The Sims games that the kids have been playing all summer are very innocent. The Sims families swim, cook, listen to music, swim, sleep, swim, and go to the bathroom (all "parts" are blurred). Nothing really bad ever happens (unless you count the people catching on fire in the kitchen. Our kids think that's funny. The little pyromaniacs.) The Sim families shop and work and are, actually, fairly boring. I don't get the kids' fascination with them.

Being the good mom I am (ahem) I went to Common Sense Media to check the reviews for Sims 2 before I forked over $40 for it . It seems that the Sims 2 game is a bit more mature than its predecessors. Who knew?

From Common Sense Media:

This is definitely not a game for younger players. Characters can have sex with limbs poking out under the covers (or out of the hot tub) -- and even their make-out sessions get pretty steamy. And the characters can be cruel or materialistic, too; a romance-driven Sim may want to have multiple partners, and upset a partner when she gets caught in bed with another, while a fortune-driven Sim might be obsessed with buying an expensive dining room chair or getting the kids into private school. Mature players, though, will surely spend many hours developing cleaning and cooking skills, attempting to win over the headmaster -- or luring a lover under the covers.

The Sex is called "Woo Hoo"on the game, taken from the words that appear in the bubbles above the Sims' heads when they're in the middle of their afternoon delight.

Yeah. I don't think that's coming to my house ANYTIME soon.

The kids were disappointed when I tried to explain why we couldn't get the game. There was whining, and a few choruses of "BUT YOU PROOOOOMISED!" I took 'em for Bruster's ice cream and that seemed to make up for their loss. A single scoop of Cotton Candy Explosion in a sugar cone covers a multitude of disappointments.

(I hear you out there. You're mumbling that I probably shouldn't be eating ice cream. Well, little do you know. I had the sugar free mango sorbet and it was DEE LISH US, thankyouverymuch. I was GOOD.)

Yesterday evening, my hubby brought home games more suited to the kids' ages and interests. He's such a good daddy.

The boys got a cool train simulator game. They can build their own tracks and run trains. My boys think trains are da bomb. They've spent today telling me every.little.thing their trains can do. It's really a cool game. I just don't need to hear about it EVERYTWENTYSECONDS.

Camryn got a veterinarian game. It's called Pet Vet or something like that. She has decided that she wants to go into veterinary medicine when she grows up, so this game is perfect for her. She's learning about animals and how to earn money and spend money and save money all at the same time.

On her game you have to buy veterinary equipment and medicines, and if you don't have enough cash to buy the things you need, you can go to the bank and take out a loan. Not Camryn. She has learned so well that credit is not a good thing. She won't even pretend to borrow money from the bank on the game. She's saving her cyber-money and paying cyber-cash for all of her cyber-office purchases. How COOL is that? She's NINE and she GETS IT.

Who needs the Sims? We don't need no stinkin' Sims!

WOO HOO!