November 14, 2009 Part 2

We have two videos of David & Goliath that were given to us and the boys, most especially Ben, really love to watch them. But what Ben really really likes to do these days, his very favorite game, is to play David & Goliath.

He gets a pair of socks, wads one up and stuffs it inside of the other one. Then he takes the outer one and, holding it by the top of the sock (these are socks that reach to mid shin), swings it around and around, pretending it is his sling shot. He does this ALL THE TIME and we are going through socks very quickly around here these days. Nick will do it too once in a while but he is not nearly as intrigued with this game as is Ben.

Ben tries to talk everyone into playing this game with him. What that means for anyone who agrees to play is that they are Goliath to Ben's David and they must pretend to get hit in the forehead with a stone and fall down dead. Ben knows most of the wording that goes with this event and also knows that the winner of the battle, David, puts his foot upon the slain Goliath. It is funny to watch and to listen to but everyone soon tires of playing the role of Goliath. Ben tries to get Nick to play this role but Nick does not like this idea. When Ben is really hurting for a Goliath, he pretends that the play fire station is Goliath and he knocks it over with his sling shot. Thankfully it is a very durable toy.

The issue with Ben's infatuation is that he tends to want to really hit people with his sling shot. We have discussed it many times and he has lost his sling shot several times because he could not seem to resist the temptation to hit someone with it. This normally happens when nobody wants to play Goliath. I don't think he has ever actually hit Goliath when someone has agreed to play the role (but I could be wrong about that).

This evening Ben again had his sling shot. He hit his daddy in the back with it a time or two, lightly I think but enough to cause daddy to tell him to stop because it hurt. The dad and I were busy putting away all of the play dough at the time and were not paying enough attention, as the sling shot should have been taken away when it was used on daddy.

A little later Ben hit Nick with his sling shot and it hurt enough that Nick was none too happy about it. I was nearby and paying attention this time and I took the sling shot away from Ben, only to find that this time, instead of a waded up sock in the sling shot, he had a hard toy inside of it. No wonder it was hurting so much when he was hitting people with it. So Ben sat in time out for a short while, while the dad and I discussed what should happen next.

The final decision was that there will be no sling shots and no type of David of Goliath, play or video, allowed for three days. Ben was very unhappy about this decision and made the bad choice of throwing fits and being a bit sassy. Sassiness has been a real issue with him since around the time he turned 4 and we are working on this issue.

So, overall, it started out being very cute and funny to watch Ben's infatuation with the whole David and Goliath thing. It is now very tiresome and I am happy that we will have a three day break from them:). Hopefully our little one will learn a little more self control from this three day break. Time will tell.

In other news, the dad and I had a few hours to ourselves while the boys had fun playing with their favorite babysitter. I am continuing to feel much much better and am starting to think that I am almost back to myself. I didn't do a whole lot today though so we will see how much stamina I have when I really dig in again, which will probably be on Monday.