December 21

After months of anticipation, today was the official launch of our D&D career, as a family.

In India Chris improvised as a way to bring some structure and intellectual involvement to action figure play with Ben. They made characters and Chris created stories for the characters to move through, but it was all a bit rough around the edges and hard to sustain, given all of Chris's other obligations.

Yesterday Chris took the kids up to Staunton and bought a stack of vintage D&D books and a sack full of goofy looking dice. Ben and I read through much of the players' handbook this afternoon and both kids pored over the other books (the monster guide in particular) on their own. (In between marathon sledding sessions across the street. During which we discovered that Mookie likes sledding! But that's another blog post, isn't it?) And then we got down to business when Chris came home from work tonight.

I declared a working dinner and everyone enjoyed their D&D prep with a side of chili and cornbread. (This may be my best chili yet - heavily spiced with cocoa and cinnamon - rich, dark, complex - yum! From the Vegan with a Vengeance cookbook.)

John Hiatt provided the sound track and since there were already more than enough people doing D&D, I read more of a wonderful book that Keely lent me - By Heart, by Kathleen Melin. Its an account of a family learning at home that is as honest and intelligent and moving as any I've ever read. If you're at all interested in home schooling or even just looking for a good read about family life, this book is worth hunting down.

After dinner the gamers adjourned to the living room. Mookie wished (again) for opposable thumbs and the capacity for speech. Poor Mookie.

I'm off to bake Molasses Spice Cookies!