Sneaky!

So The Boy's latest obsession is his new Pokemon game.

Now you might think I am a bad parent because I let him play Nintendo a lot. But see that little round thing? It's actually a Pokewalker (aka a pedometer). The deal is that he can download his little monsters to this thing and for each step he takes, he gets life points.

(Genius marketing, I'd say. He gets to mushify his brain with screen time while I get to tell myself I'm being all sly and getting him to exercise. Kind of like that time I put zucchini in the brownies. Which didn't go over all that well.)

While this doohickey does get him on the treadmill sometimes, he much prefers to bounce around the house a la Tigger.

Or, his favourite option:

He sends it with me on my runs. Yesterday I got him 19,000 lifepoints.

(Although it sort of bit him in the butt. Apparently he was crying while I was gone and wailing, "when's Mom coming home???" The Husband couldn't figure it out, until he realized that since I had taken The Boy's favourite monster with me when I went running, he was stopped in his tracks on his game. Ha!)