Pages

Friday, June 27, 2014

Home is where the fun is.

The big news around here is that we have moved Jonathan and Vivienne into an actual kids' room of their own.  (Basically, we will have the house set up to where it's actually livable about three weeks before we have to pack it in a shipping crate and send it off to America.)  I have a closet, an alcove, a shelf, and the top of a bookcase to clear out/off, but other than that, Stephen's entire computer room has been gutted and totally transformed into a kid-friendly space.  (I'll attempt to post pictures here or on Facebook once those holdouts have surrendered.)  Our house still has a long way to go, but it definitely improves the living conditions in the rest of the house now that there are designated, categorized toy bins, and the kids really enjoy playing there -- so much so that bedtime has been pushed back way too late, but we're working on that.  As an added bonus, the baby loves their room and will occasionally even let mommy leave him in there with them, until he gets run over, knocked down, hugged too lightly, or launches himself off the (very low) little Japanese table or kid-sized chairs.  One day in the not-too-distant future, he'll be able to hold his own, and Jonathan will finally get his shooting companion.

Yup.  Jonathan is all little boy and loves watching his father shoot the aliens and bad people in his video game.  I think the other boys at school also have influenced him, and so he goes around killing us all.  This doesn't disturb me as much as it might, having grown up with a brother very close in age who was into all things army for most of his childhood, but I still try to keep him from killing me too many times a day.  The house rule (which is not always successfully enforced) is no killing mommy, but you can shoot daddy if you must.  His favorite "gun" to use is his toy train track, but really anything will do.

One benefit of their new room is that I have some hope of keeping it in order, so the other night I was in there picking up (and keeping in sight of the baby, as he likes it) and found myself in the middle of their play.  Vivienne kept throwing fits -- "Gege's" -- Older brother -- "killing me.  I no like it!"  So, being the peacemaker, I decided to try to redirect the fire to the aliens behind Vivienne.  That way, he could still shoot in her general direction but he could save her instead.  This has had some limited success the past few days, and my ever-grateful son has been saved by his sister on occasion, too.  "Oh dank you, dank you Vivienne for killing de awiens."  We also turned our fire to the posters on the wall.  Sometimes Mickey gets replaced by an alien we have to kill so the good Mickey can come back, and the little boy at the picnic hugging his dog is so happy because we killed the bad alien dog so his good dog can come back.  (Yeah, kids bring out the imagination in me.)  Well, Vivienne naturally gravitates to less raucous things, like pretending the art sponge is a flute and playing the songs she learned on Little Einsteins (or "Rocket" as she calls the show).  Jonathan is way more interested in killing and dying (which he has no concept of, of course -- really reminds me of a scene in the book The Giver that I was doing with my tutoring student a while back).  He wanted some acknowledgement of his collapsing in death, so I decided to tell Vivienne that she had a magic medicine to heal him. (Of course, I stole this from Narnia -- she'd make a great Lucy.  Maybe killing aliens can teach about resurrection and set the stage for the gospel when they're ready.  Why not.)  They loved this, and soon it turned into a magic flute song to make him better, thus incorporating her game into his.

Today, they were both running around the living room with railroad track guns, shooting the aliens and bad "peoples."  Although they saved each other on multiple occasions (thanks to some redirecting from mommy), at one point, Jonathan dramatically died, so I said to Vivienne, "Quick.  Go get your magic flute."  She ran into her room, presumably to get the paint sponge, but came back from her room with a block instead, on which she played her magic song and healed her brother.

After thanking her, he got up and saw what she was holding.  "Hey.  This not a flute.  It's a BLOCK," says the boy who has been shooting aliens -- and everyone else in the house -- with dusters, dustpans, sniper towers made from blocks, train tracks, even his arms in a pinch.  But he thought it absolutely hilarious that his sister would try to pass off a block as a magic flute.  "That so funny" was his assessment of the situation.

But really, I love seeing the brother/sister dynamic being worked out.   This reminds me of playing a dress-up game based on A Little Princess with my best friend Zoe when we were little while her brother Noah and my brother Jonathan were running all around us in their wonderful basement playing pirates who would occasionally step in and beat up Miss Minchin for us.  I love how kids came make things work.

1 comment:

  1. Sounds great!
    Your house rule about never killing mommy reminds me of this little tune...

    Never throw stones at your mother
    she raised you when you were a child
    never throw stones at your mother
    she loved you all the while
    but if you can't get it out of your head
    never throw stones at your mother
    throw rocks at your father instead
    :)

    ReplyDelete