We're Suckers. We Can't Help Ourselves.

Well....I think I can safely say that one little side-effect of stemming the flow of diet coke into my system is that I can no longer stay awake past 9:30 p.m. and thus my blogging hour has been taken over.  By sleep.  You'd think I'd be happy but I'm not.  I'm annoyed.  Clearly, Gollum is alive and well.

Sooo.....back to what I started blogging about 10 days ago....

I remember when Stomper was but a wee child and would ask me silly things like, "Mommy, could you please knit me a violyn?" or "Can you make me a t-rex suit right now?"  It was so easy back then to just say no because I really couldn't do those things.  But it seems he's made some advancements in the past few years besides learning multiplication and reading chapter books.  He has figured out how to adjust his request to something that is actually feasible and thus....we do it.  For example a couple of weeks ago, after Stomper went to see The Avengers not once but twice; both of his parents got to see it with him and I can safely speak for both of said parents that they totally enjoyed the movie as well as the date with their son.  Stomper came home from his first viewing absolutely jittering with excitement and spent the next week reenacting most of the movie for me as well as portraying his favorite character, Captain America. (Down, Becky.) Pretty soon Stomper just didn't feel complete in his portrayal due to the fact that he didn't have a sheild and immediately began his campaign. "Mom....could you make me a sheild?"  I tried to deflect his pesterings as long as I could but as in most cases of child-pestering I gave in.  Pretty soon I found myself sawing away at a cardboard box and trying to make it into a shield.  It didn't take long for Troy got involved and as usual took it to a whole new level using fancy silver tape and rock-climbing webbing to improve its appearance and functionality.

Sometimes when we do stuff like this Stomper loses interest in the new object in a depressingly speedy way.  For example, one day he was trying to make a guitar out of a box and it just wasn't working.  Before we knew it, Troy spent approximately three hours in the garage making a guitar out of plywood. It was completely awesome.  And Stomper played with it for about one hour.  Not quite the effort/reward quotient we were looking for.  I am happy to say that the same is not true of the silver shield.  Not only does he continue to play with it almost every day, but whenever his buddies come over they form a little pack of Avengers in the back yard, one of whom is always wielding a somewhat odd-looking but definitely awesome Captain America Shield.