Wii are Family! - 1/14/09

Whee! We have the Wii!
My husband and I have long resisted owning a video game system. Both our children are “vidiots”, entering a coma-like trance whenever the television is on. If a friend is playing a Gameboy, you can be sure that my kids will be hovering behind, watching the action over the poor kid’s shoulder. Ditto the computer. So you can understand why we would hold off for as long as possible.

After years of begging, we reluctantly allowed our children to own The Leapster. This handheld, electronic system plays only educational games. Our kids were mollified, learning math and phonics that were cleverly woven into Batman and Madagascar games. Then everyone around them owned the Nintendo DS Lite, so again we reluctantly allowed them to upgrade (bye-bye educational games, hello Lego Star Wars.)

Then suddenly, everyone we knew had Playstation, Game Cube, Xbox or the Wii. My husband is not one to give in to peer pressure, but my mommy guilt couldn’t live with the idea that my kids would be the only ones in Hanover without a game system. It’s hard enough that we’ve never been to Disney (my husband and I being the only two adults in the continental US who have never been to Florida). So when I spotted the Nintendo Wii at Wal-Mart this fall, I quickly dialed my husband at work and asked his thoughts.

Predictably, he felt it was a bad idea. Our kids were pretty good about regulating their handheld game use, but he felt that purchasing the Wii was just tempting fate. They would be glued to the television all day, every day. Plus, it really just wasn’t in our budget this year.

Sadly, I hung up the phone and promptly bought the Wii.

My rationale: A video game system was inevitable. I grew up without a real Barbie (my parents used to buy the knockoff dolls that were either too big or too small for Barbie’s clothes) and to this day I still feel that something’s missing in my life. The Wii seemed like a good choice in that I could control the types of games we purchased, steering away from the shooting games and focusing more on ones that required my kids to get up and move.

Needless to say, the Wii was a big hit with the kids. I love the fact that my 7-year old will come home from school and go for a 10-minute “run” before doing his homework. My 10 year old is the hula-hoop champ of the house. My husband and I spent New Year’s Day playing endless rounds of golf (yes, the Wii won him over.) A good friend and I went in search of the WiiFit because, in her words, “We fat!” And though I was a bit miffed that the WiiFit tallied my fitness age at 61, I console myself with the fact that I’m better at the downhill slalom than I ever was on real skis (and no frostbite!)

My family and I laughed ourselves silly when we created our “Miis”, computer versions of ourselves that look frighteningly real. But the best part of all is that we’re using the Wii together. The family that plays together stays together.

So do we love our Wii?
Oui!