In talking again with my wife about this post, she thinks I'm giving short shrift to the role of RPGs in our homeschool environment.
She doesn't see our gaming as a supplement to the core curriculum that she focuses on. Instead, she sees it as a curriculum in its own right, and one that develops organically, without a whole lot of structure. The way she described it reminded me of unschooling.
It's definitely a different way of looking at it than how I have been presenting it in this blog. I have talked about RPGs supplementing the curriculum, or even being "part of" the curriculum, but she sees it as a second curriculum, and one that isn't as tightly controlled as the more traditional schooling she provides in the classroom setting.
That's a more accurate way of describing what we're doing, I think.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Another Music Puzzle
The characters will be able to hear a simple, repeating melody playing overhead. The melody will correspond to the root notes of a standard jazz progression:
I vi ii V I (1, 6, 2, 5, 1, or C, A, D, G, C)
This is the order that the characters will have to tread the discs in order to get to the other side. Stepping on any of the discs out of order will dump the character into the pit below. The minimum weight to activate a disc is 50 lbs, so the players won't be able to easily test them. The distances between the discs will be such that the PCs can jump from side to side (e.g., from #3 to #2), or from one row to the next (e.g., from #2 to #4), or even diagonally to the next row (e.g., from #2 to #7), but they won't be able to skip rows (e.g., from #2 to #8).
You may have noticed that they will not be able to make it back to disc 1 from disc 5. The players will need to make the connection that #8 can serve as a substitute to #1, just as the 8th note of a major scale is the same note as the 1st note in the scale, just an octave higher. So the true pattern is 1, 6, 2, 5, 8.
This will not be an easy puzzle for them. The pit won't be save or die, of course, but I will put something creepy down in the bottom - and a way to get back up on the near side - to add to the excitement.
Spreading the Learning
Last week I posted a link to my blog on /r/rpg over on Reddit, and a user asked me some great questions:
How do you keep your embedded curriculum relevant to each of your children's lessons? I don't have much understanding of how homeschooling works, but I'm interested to see how you can avoid having the eldest child solve all of the simpler problems aimed at the younger two.
I gave an answer over there, and considered just linking to that and calling it a day. Then I decided that I'd like to answer it again here. I've given it some more thought, and I talked to my wife and got her thoughts on the subject too, which I'll share.
1. Keeping game content relevant to my children's lessons
This is how I interpreted MrWiggles2's first question. The underlying assumption in the question is that my kids' curriculum and the content in our RPG games are tightly coupled. This was actually something I blogged about trying to do early on when I first started integrating RPGs with the kids' homeschool education. The idea was that my wife and I would look at what the kids would be learning in the coming months, and then I would take that and weave it into my game planning and preparation. It was a lofty goal.
Sadly, it didn't happen that way in my house, for several reasons:
- Gymnastics and a few other things don't leave us sufficient time to play RPGs often enough for this level of planning to be possible.
- Making dungeons is a creative release for me, and the dungeons I create kind of go where they want to go.
There, I said it. My creativity is a beast, and I selfishly give it free reign. Looking at subject matter and trying to make a dungeon around it feels forced to me. The dungeon I'm making now, by contrast, has things in it that are good educational content, but I chose that content based on ideas that came to me when designing the dungeon.
And the time thing really is a big deal. By the time we got around to actually playing something that I had planned specifically to coincide with their lessons, the lessons would be long behind us.
I'm not saying that you can't tightly weave targeted subject matter into your games. I'm just saying that's not how it's happening at our table.
My wife's take on content: she has observed our kids recognizing in their core curriculum things they have already learned in the game. This is a happy accident, but it has happened on multiple occasions. One prime example is the Skull of Fibon. Just recently they learned about the Fibonacci sequence at co-op, but my kids already had it down cold. Just one way the RPG complements the core curriculum.
2. Keeping older kids from solving all the problems
In my answer on the Reddit thread, I acknowledged that I hadn't actually thought about this before. Since then, looking back on our games, I realized that the reason it hasn't been much of a problem for us so far is because I haven't hit the kids with a whole bunch of puzzles yet. On the few occasions when they faced puzzle-like obstacles, everyone freely offered ideas and there was at least a modest degree of listening and cooperation. In truth, though, young Nora has been dominated a bit by the oder two, so her ideas seldom make it to the forefront.
Solutions:
- Separation: you can't solve a problem for your little sister if your character isn't there with her.
- Conditions: E.g., blindness, unconsciousness, etc. You can't solve the puzzle if your character can't see the pieces. And you can't share your ideas with each other if you've been silenced by a spell.
- Class-based puzzles: Make puzzles where it only makes sense for one of the characters to have the knowledge to solve it. For example, it's a plant-based puzzle, so the druid has to solve it. The trick is to make it so it doesn't feel forced. Easier said than done, I know.
- Just go ahead and force it: The DM just decides who he/she wants to solve the problem. "I want Nora to try to solve this one."
My wife's take on evenly dividing the puzzle-solving load: surprisingly, this wasn't a big deal for her. She's fine with whoever solves it. As long as everyone is paying attention, there will be benefits for all.
Finally, I just want to reiterate something I said on the thread: I don't get bogged down in what the best way is to maximize the academic benefit. I focus on having fun and letting any learning happen naturally.
That's how we roll.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Music Dungeon
 |
| Look closely, these are not pictures of rooms. But use them as rooms I shall. |
On their way in, the characters will pass under an arch bearing the inscription: "The Way of a Warrior is to establish Harmony."* This is a clue to solving the dungeon's final mystery, as we shall see.
The characters will then face six puzzles. These won't be traps, per se, though some of them could be potentially dangerous. These puzzles must be solved in order to obtain six wondrous musical instruments.
As each musical instrument is obtained, a theme comprised of low, thrumming tones will gradually build. This will be accomplished through the Garage Band music-mixing software on my Mac, playing in continuous loop (the software gives me the ability to toggle tracks on and off). For each instrument the characters find, I add a note to the theme. Not loud enough to distract the players from the game, but enough so they'll know it's there. Together the notes form a chord, but soon the players will realize that the chord is not harmonious and with each tone added is getting less so. I will take this opportunity to explain to the kids the difference between harmony and discord, and how discord can be used to heighten tension.
The sixth item releases a demon, whose name is Mißklang or Zwietracht (German for discord), who attacks the characters. The musical instruments the kids collected have to be placed in niches around the demon's chamber, and they have to be placed in a particular order to change the theme from discord to harmony. The demon cannot otherwise be killed, but as harmonious notes replace the obnoxious ones, the demon weakens and is shown to be transforming into something less demonic. Eventually, when the right combination is found, he is revealed to be a handsome prince (because it's girls playing the game, after all). The prince rewards them by providing the first part of the key to the Black Tower of Despair.
For what it's worth, the back story on the prince is that he was cursed by his sister, the queen Esseniri whose tomb they seek, when he betrayed her in an effort to save their people from her tyranny.
So, a few days ago in the comments I promised sample puzzles. I've already given the big puzzle for this music dungeon above, and now here is one of the six puzzles they'll have to solve to get the music instruments:
Sample Puzzle
Lava separates the party from the target musical instrument. Three large tuning forks stand in the lava in a line leading to the instrument. An inscription on the wall in front of the lava shows 12 figures: 7 white, and 5 black, all in a line, configured like the white and black keys of a piano. Three are standing, the rest are seated. The three correspond to a major chord (the second is four positions - or semitones - from the first, and the third one is three positions from the second. These correspond to the first, third, and fifth notes of a major scale). If someone sings a note (or if the bard plays a note on his guitar), one of the tuning forks will vibrate, making the lava ripple away from it for as long as the note is held. If the kids make a three-part harmony (which I know for a fact my three kids can), then all three forks will vibrate and a path will be cleared through the lava to the instrument for as long as they can maintain the chord.
Do you have ideas for other musical puzzles?
This puzzle is the most well-developed one I have. I have two more in the works, but I'll need six in all, because that's how many notes I want the theme to have.
Any suggestions for more music puzzles?
* "The Way of the Warrior is to establish Harmony." - Morihei Ueshiba
Sunday, March 18, 2012
City in a Carcass
In my last post I talked about my goals for a big dungeon adventure I'm making for the kids. Today I'm going to describe the background of this adventure, and then dive into the overall structure. That will set up the context for next time when I talk about some of the puzzles in one particular section of the dungeon.
I've already given a little bit of the background for this adventure here. Some details have changed since then. First, the carcass of the turtle-shaped demigod is upside down, which is the position the creature came to rest in when it met its doom (incidentally, it was slain by another demigod who figures prominently in part two of the adventure path, which takes place in Nimoriél...but that's a story for another day). Second, the animal heads have changed. They are now bird, spider, mole, and ardvaark, for reasons we shall soon see.
The Micqui built their city in the remains of this beast, and they dominated the people around them for centuries. Their last sovereign before their empire collapsed was a queen named Esseniri, and it is for her tomb - and the treasure hopefully buried with her - that the characters seek.
Structure
Since the turtle is upside down, that means its carapace, or dorsal (back) shell, forms a giant bowl. Tectonic forces have misshapen it over the ages, but for our purposes thinking of it as a bowl is useful. An underwater river falls into this bowl and forms Mors Aeterna, the Lake of Eternal Death, which drains out through one of the heads into another river, deeper down.
This configuration also means that the demigod's plastron, or ventral (belly) shell, forms a ceiling high above the lake to enclose the space. The river which dumps into the lake actually cuts through some of the ancient scutes in the perimeter of his carapace and slips through the crack between plastron and carapace before plummeting to the dark waters below. For what it's worth, the part of the dungeon the kids are in now is cut into one of these perimeter scutes, and they are nearing the waterfall. Back when the city was still on the surface, this section served as an observatory that the ancient scholars used to create their calendar. Over the next week I'm going to be studying Mayan and Aztec calendars for ideas to slip into this particular section.
The vertebrae for the creature's two spines, which run perpendicular to each other and intersect in the middle, are for the most part intact. Some of these vertebrae poke out of the lake to form islands. Rising from the largest of these at the junction of the two spines is the Black Tower of Despair, which is impenetrable except via a magical gate which requires a special key to be opened. The queen's tomb can be found beneath this black tower, and so they will need to find the key to get there.
Each of the four animal skulls - one for each cardinal direction - contains a different dungeon. Among the treasures in each dungeon will be idols shaped like simplified versions of the animal heads. Together these idols can be assembled together to form the key that opens the magical gate.
The dungeons will each have a theme corresponding to human senses, as follows:
You may have noticed that I skipped our sense of smell. That sense is represented by a rivalry between two races who now inhabit this subterranean region. One race, called the Dark Ones, lives on the edge of the Lake of Eternal Death and fishes its waters. These creatures do not cast aside their attire when it becomes too old and worn; instead, they simply add new layers over top of the old ones. For this reason, they reek terribly. The other race is one I made up myself, and they're called Nifflers. They have no eyes at all and get by almost exclusively with their sense of smell, so it should be plain to see why they hate the Dark Ones. The Nifflers inhabit some of the vertebrae islands and patrol the ribs which extend out from the spines and fuse with the carapace to form a network of tunnels beneath the lake.
Both races are hunted by a wyvern who ranges over the lake, and they try to appease him by kidnapping members of the rival race as sacrifices to the wicked beast.
This is the environment the kids are entering now, and they have no idea what they're getting into.
Next time I'll give an example of a puzzle from the bird/music dungeon.
I've already given a little bit of the background for this adventure here. Some details have changed since then. First, the carcass of the turtle-shaped demigod is upside down, which is the position the creature came to rest in when it met its doom (incidentally, it was slain by another demigod who figures prominently in part two of the adventure path, which takes place in Nimoriél...but that's a story for another day). Second, the animal heads have changed. They are now bird, spider, mole, and ardvaark, for reasons we shall soon see.
 |
| Ayotl, in better days |
Structure
Since the turtle is upside down, that means its carapace, or dorsal (back) shell, forms a giant bowl. Tectonic forces have misshapen it over the ages, but for our purposes thinking of it as a bowl is useful. An underwater river falls into this bowl and forms Mors Aeterna, the Lake of Eternal Death, which drains out through one of the heads into another river, deeper down.
This configuration also means that the demigod's plastron, or ventral (belly) shell, forms a ceiling high above the lake to enclose the space. The river which dumps into the lake actually cuts through some of the ancient scutes in the perimeter of his carapace and slips through the crack between plastron and carapace before plummeting to the dark waters below. For what it's worth, the part of the dungeon the kids are in now is cut into one of these perimeter scutes, and they are nearing the waterfall. Back when the city was still on the surface, this section served as an observatory that the ancient scholars used to create their calendar. Over the next week I'm going to be studying Mayan and Aztec calendars for ideas to slip into this particular section.
The vertebrae for the creature's two spines, which run perpendicular to each other and intersect in the middle, are for the most part intact. Some of these vertebrae poke out of the lake to form islands. Rising from the largest of these at the junction of the two spines is the Black Tower of Despair, which is impenetrable except via a magical gate which requires a special key to be opened. The queen's tomb can be found beneath this black tower, and so they will need to find the key to get there.
Each of the four animal skulls - one for each cardinal direction - contains a different dungeon. Among the treasures in each dungeon will be idols shaped like simplified versions of the animal heads. Together these idols can be assembled together to form the key that opens the magical gate.
The dungeons will each have a theme corresponding to human senses, as follows:
- Bird: hearing. This will be a music-themed dungeon.
- Spider: sight. This will be a dungeon that features the use of light and mirrors.
- Mole: touch. The characters will find themselves misled by their other senses.
- Aardvark: taste. The characters will find themselves being tasted by the last living tissue of the ancient demigod! (think Millenium Falcon in that living cave)
You may have noticed that I skipped our sense of smell. That sense is represented by a rivalry between two races who now inhabit this subterranean region. One race, called the Dark Ones, lives on the edge of the Lake of Eternal Death and fishes its waters. These creatures do not cast aside their attire when it becomes too old and worn; instead, they simply add new layers over top of the old ones. For this reason, they reek terribly. The other race is one I made up myself, and they're called Nifflers. They have no eyes at all and get by almost exclusively with their sense of smell, so it should be plain to see why they hate the Dark Ones. The Nifflers inhabit some of the vertebrae islands and patrol the ribs which extend out from the spines and fuse with the carapace to form a network of tunnels beneath the lake.
Both races are hunted by a wyvern who ranges over the lake, and they try to appease him by kidnapping members of the rival race as sacrifices to the wicked beast.
This is the environment the kids are entering now, and they have no idea what they're getting into.
Next time I'll give an example of a puzzle from the bird/music dungeon.
Friday, March 16, 2012
The Start of Something Big
Long time survivors of this blog may recall that I also run a Pathfinder game for my adult friends, and that my homebrew world they run in is pretty much the same one my kids run in. Sort of. They can't affect each other's version of the world, and they can't interact with one another. This means that I'm effectively running the same adventure path twice, first with the adults who started as level 5 adventurers, and then with the kids who started at level 1. So even if the adult party kills a major villain in, say, the Temple of Klethnu, that villain will still be there waiting for the kids when they arrive at the same temple. Unless he's busy elsewhere, that is.
First, a definition for the uninitiated. An "adventure path," in the sense that I'm using the term, is the set of adventures that the characters will engage in over the full span of their career, from whatever level they start at to whenever the characters are retired. Adventure paths don't necessarily cover the entire PC career, but they do at least encompass a set of adventures that are connected to each other to form some narrative. This particular adventure path I'm making will be it for these characters. Once it's over, the kids retire these characters and we play something else.
The overarching structure of the adventure path that I've created/am still creating for my players consists of four parts. The adults started with part two, the kids with part one. I started running the setting well before I had an adventure path in mind, though; the adventure path has grown organically from the initial adventures that I created, specifically the "part two" that the adults just finished up after a year of playing in the elven city of Nimoriél.* But the overall adventure path is a subject for another day. I mention it today just to give some context for the dungeon I'm making.
Which brings me to my goals for this dungeon:
- Advance the characters from level 3 to level 6;
- Incorporate the dungeon seamlessly into the adventure path;
- Challenge the players mentally;
- Teach the kids about a wide range of subjects without them realizing it.
The first goal is to advance the characters from level 3 (their current level), to level 6, which is the level they will need to achieve in order to be ready to survive the horrors waiting for them in the Nimoriél greater metropolitan area. Three levels worth of experience points represents many encounters, so the dungeon has to be fairly big.
My second goal is for the dungeon to feel like part of the overall adventure path. That won't matter until much later, of course, long after they have advanced to Nimoriél and points beyond. Right now the kids have no clue that this adventure path even exists, but years later I want them to look back on all our sessions with a sense of wonder and realize how they all fit so seamlessly together into one cohesive unit. That's my pride talking, I admit. I want them to look back on the adventure path as a whole, and each adventure and dungeon along the way, and reach the inevitable conclusion that their dad was a total bad*ss game master. And I want them to see how I did it and inspire them to reach for similarly lofty creative goals.
An adjunct to this second goal is that I want the dungeon to tie together with what they've done up until this point. I want to foster the illusion that I had the whole thing planned before we even began. Eventually they'll know the truth because I'll share my techniques, but let them wonder for awhile.
My third goal is to make this a mentally challenging dungeon, mainly from a problem-solving perspective. My kids compete in Future Problem Solvers, and I've noticed that since starting FPS, their problem-solving skills have really sharpened. I've got to come up with something challenging enough to keep them interested. So this dungeon will have lots of puzzles, none of which will be solvable by mere skill rolls. And though it will have no shortage of nasty creepy-crawlies, several of the enemies they face will not be beatable by combat.
I'm feeling even more ambitious than that, though. What I've done is created a structure for this dungeon such that the whole thing is one big puzzle, with subsections which are also puzzles which themselves contain puzzles. You'll see how this works when I describe the dungeon structure next time.
(Also, the adventure path itself is a giant puzzle of sorts. Tiny little seeds will be planted in this dungeon that will be clues for unraveling the biggest of mysteries when the characters have advanced to become legendary heroes and everything they hold dear is on the line.)
My final goal (aside from simply having fun), is to sneak in some educational elements. As always, I'll take a stealth approach to this: if the kids are having a blast and don't even realize they're learning, then the mission will be a success. The following are a few subject areas that I know I'll be addressing:
- Music theory
- Ancient Mesoamerican civilizations
- Astronomy
- Geometry
- Logic
- Anatomy
- How to kill vampires
This last skill is of particular importance. Not all vampires sparkle.
* Spanning just three weeks of in-game time. In other words, we met once per week and played the setting for one year, but the characters were only in and around the elven city for three weeks.
I mention this to give scale to the adventure path. Parts two and three are the biggest, and part four is the smallest. I estimate the whole effort could take three to four years. This assumes we actually get chances to play. If you've read this blog at all, you know that's a long shot.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Troll GM is Troll
In a previous post I mentioned Sophie's poker face. It's really more like a Mona Lisa smile, especially in the eyes. She has heavy lids, and nice lips with only the faintest hint of a smile. When she gives me this look, I feel like she's appraising me. It's the same look she had on her face when she entered the world, and it's as disconcerting now as it was then.
Warning: Spoilers ahead. This post contains information about the Black Fang adventure that comes with the Pathfinder Beginner Box.
When she was running the "Black Fang" adventure, one of the treasures the party found before I arrived to play was a little wooden toy dragon with ruby eyes. The rubies were worth something like 50 gold pieces a pop. A nice little find. Then the characters went on to die several times. When they did, Sophie let them come back to life in the dungeon, with a caveat: she placed them randomly in the dungeon. She also instituted a teleportation trap. Her reasoning, we learned later, was that the characters had already cleared the rooms, so she was trying to make the old rooms interesting. She also wasn't letting the players see the whole map that comes printed on the battle mat that comes in the box. This made sense, given the teleportation trap, and resulted in that wonderful feeling of being lost. All of this was her invention, by the way. Nothing new, of course, but cool that she came up with it on her own.
What the players didn't know was that Sophie had run out of treasures to hand out.
When I joined, we defeated some goblins and found their treasure chest. Unfortunately for Sophie, the players had already cleared this room once before and taken the treasure, so she had to come up with something new on the fly. One of the items she put in there was another toy dragon, this time with Saphire eyes. The girls quickly pointed out that they already had one kind of like it. "Cool," I said, thinking that since there were two such toys that it must be a clue or puzzle of some sort. "Maybe there are more."
"Maybe together they form a weapon," suggested Livie, playing a wizard.
I looked over at Sophie, and she was wearing that old, familiar expression on her face. No help there, but I felt we were on the right track.
A little later on we stumbled on the lair of Black Fang himself, a black dragon. We weren't ready to take on a dragon. He didn't see us, so we carefully withdrew. Our plan was to clear out everything else in the dungeon and, hopefully, level up before the big showdown.
We did find another treasure later on, and what do you know? It had a toy dragon in it. Sophie's expression remained unchanged. At this point our own personal maps connected all the rooms together, and the only room left was the dragon's lair. We did level up and, most importantly in our minds, we had the entire set of toy dragons. Off we went to face the menace.
It did not go well. We were already faring poorly in the combat when Livie said, "What about the toys?"
"Of course! The toys!"
Her wizard then proceeded to waste several rounds using Mage Hand to summon the toys from my possession to hers, then try to assemble the toys in some way, and even point them at the dragon and yell commands to try to activate the figures.
No luck. They were just toys. The dragon killed us.
...but Sophie was getting tired of us dying all the time and bailed us out (just an opinion: this initial adventure should really have at least four characters in play, not just the three that we tried it with). And so we "defeated" the dragon.
Afterwards I asked Sophie about the toys, and that's when I learned that she had simply made up the second toy and then intentionally added the third toy with the sole purpose of messing with us. She had heard our musings about their purpose and decided it would be fun to feed into them to give them credence. She even entertained the possibility of stealing our idea and making the toys special in some way, but figured it would be more fun to have them do nothing at all.
In other words, she trolled us. Hard. And her expression hadn't changed one tiny bit the whole time.
I am so proud.
Note: I tried to photograph her expression this morning to share on this post. Although I captured the expression, her hair was all mangled and the lighting wasn't doing her any favors. I figure if I'm going to post pictures of my kids on the web, I at least owe it to them to let them look their best. Thus, no pic.
Warning: Spoilers ahead. This post contains information about the Black Fang adventure that comes with the Pathfinder Beginner Box.
When she was running the "Black Fang" adventure, one of the treasures the party found before I arrived to play was a little wooden toy dragon with ruby eyes. The rubies were worth something like 50 gold pieces a pop. A nice little find. Then the characters went on to die several times. When they did, Sophie let them come back to life in the dungeon, with a caveat: she placed them randomly in the dungeon. She also instituted a teleportation trap. Her reasoning, we learned later, was that the characters had already cleared the rooms, so she was trying to make the old rooms interesting. She also wasn't letting the players see the whole map that comes printed on the battle mat that comes in the box. This made sense, given the teleportation trap, and resulted in that wonderful feeling of being lost. All of this was her invention, by the way. Nothing new, of course, but cool that she came up with it on her own.
What the players didn't know was that Sophie had run out of treasures to hand out.
When I joined, we defeated some goblins and found their treasure chest. Unfortunately for Sophie, the players had already cleared this room once before and taken the treasure, so she had to come up with something new on the fly. One of the items she put in there was another toy dragon, this time with Saphire eyes. The girls quickly pointed out that they already had one kind of like it. "Cool," I said, thinking that since there were two such toys that it must be a clue or puzzle of some sort. "Maybe there are more."
"Maybe together they form a weapon," suggested Livie, playing a wizard.
I looked over at Sophie, and she was wearing that old, familiar expression on her face. No help there, but I felt we were on the right track.
A little later on we stumbled on the lair of Black Fang himself, a black dragon. We weren't ready to take on a dragon. He didn't see us, so we carefully withdrew. Our plan was to clear out everything else in the dungeon and, hopefully, level up before the big showdown.
We did find another treasure later on, and what do you know? It had a toy dragon in it. Sophie's expression remained unchanged. At this point our own personal maps connected all the rooms together, and the only room left was the dragon's lair. We did level up and, most importantly in our minds, we had the entire set of toy dragons. Off we went to face the menace.
It did not go well. We were already faring poorly in the combat when Livie said, "What about the toys?"
"Of course! The toys!"
Her wizard then proceeded to waste several rounds using Mage Hand to summon the toys from my possession to hers, then try to assemble the toys in some way, and even point them at the dragon and yell commands to try to activate the figures.
No luck. They were just toys. The dragon killed us.
...but Sophie was getting tired of us dying all the time and bailed us out (just an opinion: this initial adventure should really have at least four characters in play, not just the three that we tried it with). And so we "defeated" the dragon.
Afterwards I asked Sophie about the toys, and that's when I learned that she had simply made up the second toy and then intentionally added the third toy with the sole purpose of messing with us. She had heard our musings about their purpose and decided it would be fun to feed into them to give them credence. She even entertained the possibility of stealing our idea and making the toys special in some way, but figured it would be more fun to have them do nothing at all.
In other words, she trolled us. Hard. And her expression hadn't changed one tiny bit the whole time.
I am so proud.
Note: I tried to photograph her expression this morning to share on this post. Although I captured the expression, her hair was all mangled and the lighting wasn't doing her any favors. I figure if I'm going to post pictures of my kids on the web, I at least owe it to them to let them look their best. Thus, no pic.
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