Just when you think you have your kids figured, you learn something new and surprising about them!
Spindles is the least attention seeking in our clan; the quiet achiever, the peacemaker; he doesn't like to show vulnerability. In short he is predictable. Or so I thought.
The past couple of months, we have developed a routine of playing Scrabble a couple of times a week and at least once a day on the weekends. It is our thing.
But not until today did I realize his pattern of play. Yes, this old girl is a bit slow.
So here it is. When it is his turn, Spindles often puts forward absolutely ridiculous suggestions of words that wouldn't exist in any language, let alone ours. Then he checks the dictionary, and attempts several more crazy combination of letters, before settling for something short and unhelpful like 'as'.
So all this time I have just thought he needed a LOT of help. And I check his letters, and find he can put down a very satisfactory 5 or 6 letter word, which when I point out to him he will not put down. And I put THAT down to him being independant and only wanting to put down words he can come up with himself.....
until I noticed that...
Spindles routinely beats me by about 20 points, and I am pretty good with the English language, thank you very much.
Know what he is doing? Waiting till he can fit a word over the triple word boxes, or a word using either the 'x' or the 'z' smack onto the triple letter box. And if there is no way HE can possibly do it, he actually attempts to block access to those places so I can't get a look in.
His whole Scrabble gameplan is just getting by till those options turn up and then he strikes like so many bolts of lightening, and gets 3 or so 25+ scores in a row, and leaves me in his dust.
Is that normal?
I knew he was competitive when playing games with his siblings, but with his sweet little Mama? :)
In my excitement I forgot to get a photo of the fully unpacked meat. It totally obscured our table. 
