Mistaken Identity

Lately, Elliott has been fixating on heroes and villians, but mostly on the villians. He's been asking me all kinds of questions about bad guys and if they shoot people and why do bad guys do this or that. (Yes, he still trys to be spiderman. Every time his hands are sticky he climbs up onto the back of the couch and trys to plant his grimy hands on my white walls!) He also loves to imitate any bad guy he has seen from movies (not that he has seen many). He also imitates the good guys, but mostly the loud things that they do.

Being a girl and all, I'm pretty lost at how to proceed. I can see that this is something that is not going to go away. I don't know if all children are like this, but my Elliott just tractor beams in on anything negative. We borrowed an illustrated account of The Flood from the library and on the title page there is a picture of a house on fire. That is his favorite page. The page he has the most questions about. A woman at my church pointed out, that these boys are our warriors, our leaders. We have to train them up to be men, to lead and to protect, and it is natural for them to be interested in these things.

If Elliott is going to be fixating on violence this way, then I at least want to try to channel it in the right direction. So... This week, I asked the librarian if they had any books for three year olds that had good example heroes or something. I mentioned I had been trying to tell Elliott about Bible heroes, so she showed me the illustrated bible stories section. We found three pretty cool books about "Daniel and the Lions Den," "David and Goliath," and "Jonah and the Big Fish." These are his favorite books to read and pretty much seem to satisfy his thirst for drama or whatever it is. I have also been telling him about how David "[...] caught [a lion] by its beard, and struck and killed it." (1 Samuel 17:36) and how it helped him learn to trust God to help him with the bigger things.

Anyway, last night, my husband had been home for a few hours and I had put the baby to bed, withdrawn to a little corner of the couch, and cozied up with my computer, leaving David to handle our little 3 year old warrior. Elliott was walking around and relatively calm for being awake--none of his usual loudly delivered sound effects or acrobatic feats. Tonight he was calmly walking around after David and making conversation asking lots of questions. I don't really recall many details leading up to 'the event' since I had pretty much checked out for the night, but there was a question that caught my attention and snapped me back into family life.

"Dad, did you kill a lion, yesterday?" (Yesterday is Elliott's term for all things past tense. Whether it was an hour ago or a year.)

(David) "What?"

"Did you just kill a lion, yesterday?"

"What? No!"

This is where I jumped in...

"No, no, Elliott. That was David."

(Elliott) "David, did you just kill a lion, yesterday?"

(Me) "No, Elliott. That was King David, not Daddy David."

Okay, I don't mean to run on so, but there was another absolutely hilarious thing that Elliott did that night that I have to tell you about... Moments after the 'Daddy killing a lion' fiasco, Elliott walks into the living room with a glass and a Hersey's candy bar.

"Mom. Can I have chocolate milk?" he says while trying to fit the chocolate into the glass.

Oh. My. Gosh. I was rolling. That was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Being a parent is the best!