In this corner, we have our first contender: a bearded, weight-lifting, treadmill-running, health-food-consuming born and raised in Michigan, racing treacherous winters and scorching summers...Ryan Bruner!
And in this corner, we have...his four-year-old daughter!
Round one. Ryan's looking fierce. Arms swinging, sweat forming on his brow. He dodges to the left, dodges to the right. Ooh! He takes one to the upper jaw. Then another in the gut. Then another and another. He manages to jab one right to his daughter's nose, but she's quick to recover and pummels him again. He's down for the count!
And that, my friends, is how things are in my house. No, it isn't a new discipline technique. And no, it isn't an attempt to toughen up our daughter. And NO, I'm not abusing anyone. (If anything, she's the one abusing me!)
No, nothing like that. Welcome to the world of Wii Sports...where you can beat up your kids (or your kids can beat up you) and have a blast doing it. Or sore arms.
Well, we did it. We bought a Wii. Well, first we searched for a Wii, but thanks in part to the coordination efforts of a friend of mine, I managed to buy the last one from a shipment of them to Wal-Mart a few weeks back. I got it all connected up, and ever since, our family nights have consisted of beating each other up, or attempting to make four strikes in a row (so far, no one has managed that one), or hitting one out of the park.
And so far, here's what I know. I'm good at bowling, and that's about it. My eight-year-old beat me at baseball. My ten-year-old beat me at tennis. My six-year-old...well, he hasn't beat me at anything yet, come to think of it. And my four-year-old? Well, she currently holds the Bruner-weight championship title. She's managed to go three rounds with her oldest brother a couple times, but usually she wins in the first round.
It is kind of funny to watch, too. Her "Mii" (which, for those who don't have a Wii, is simply a character you create on the computer to look like yourself) with braided pig-tails throwing punches at my bearded Mii with glasses.
There are, of course, down sides to the whole Wii Sports addition to our home. Such as my six-year-old deciding to take boxing outside the virtual arena and into our living room. That was nixed immediately. But in general, it has been a lot of fun to be playing together as a family. It has even taught our kids a lesson in team spirit. When my wife was getting down about failing to pick up even a spare after several frames, the boys were quick to cheer her on. It's also provided opportunities to realize that it isn't who wins that matter, but that we're having fun along the way.
Anyhow, that's our life, so far, with a Wii. My daughter beat me up. But don't worry, next time, she's going down, I tell you. Down.
Can you tell that I love her?
