A Happy Nother Customer!

Grandma and Grandpa usually bring their laptop when they come and visit, and set it up in the dining room. Alex loves to sit on Grandma's lap and "play cakes." It's a freebie game from Microsoft where you move a cake down an assembly line, trying to build it to the specifications the game give you. Alex tells Grandma the shape, cake color, frosting color and decors. If you make a mistake, the cake goes into the trashcan. But if everything is right, it's boxed up and set in the delivery truck. Grandma says "Another happy customer!" And Alex echoes "A happy nother customer!"

For Christmas this year, Chris's big gift was a new computer for the kitchen. We got a touch screen, and for the past few weeks, this struck me as a gimmick without much use. However, today we realized that the computer comes with the cakes game. And the touch screen starts to make a lot more sense.

Alex has us move his chair over to the computer desk. At first, he had a hard time with the touch screen - he'd point with all five fingers, or keep pressing on the screen instead of just a light touch. He'd beg us to come over and help him: "I cannot do it!" he'd cry. But when I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, I'm not going to wash onion juice off my hands just to move the game along. We told him he was on his own.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen was echoing with his happy shrieks. "I got a CIRCLE!" he'd shout. Expertly, he flicks that cake along the assembly line, applying the "dropgums' with a final flourish. It's amazing how fast these kids can leanr when they're truly motivated - it only took him one demonstration to learn how to recognize and choose the "New game" button at the end. Meanwhile, Chris learned there was an expert level, and after Alex went to bed, he set out to master it. We are making nother customers happy late into the evening.