Webkinz World-ly

My kids LOVE their webkinz. If I need a good way to "encourage" them to clean their room, I am always more successful with threatening to take away Webkinz, than I am with taking away Wii time.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Webkinz, they are stuffed animals that come with a code that you can enter online, and then you can "take care" of your animal in a computer game. You earn money, take them to the doctor, buy them things, and they can even visit friends.

The funny thing is, my kids have always enjoyed playing with the actual stuffed animal a lot more than they do the computer stuff.

This week, however, since I've been trying to organize our house and catch up on laundry, I've let Dillon play Webkinz on the computer every day, just to keep him busy.

Today, when I logged him in, I noticed that his monkey was quite hungry.

Does it bother anyone else when their kid's webkinz are hungry?

I. can't. stand. it.

So amid my super busy day, I sat down, and played a Tetris-like game for 15 minutes to earn some "kinzcash", so I could buy some food for the starving VIRTUAL monkey.

Then I asked Dillon why he hadn't been feeding his monkey. He answered that he wanted to, but he never had enough money.

I asked him what he does in Webkinz World if he's not "earning money". He answered that he HAS earned money, but he's spent it all on PAINT to paint his animals' rooms.

This comes AFTER he announced yesterday that he would like me to add more blue to his own room.

I think it's time for the poor kid to get out and play some baseball...