The Spy Box...

Daddy's wonderful Aunt Edna (known to the kids as Nana) is very artistic and loves to share her art with the kids. She has painted and framed quite a few pictures for Meggie over the years, and continues to spoil Carson and Molly with her beautiful work. (Carson has three framed Nana originals in his bedroom and Molly has two in hers.)

On Thanksgiving, Nana gave Carson this awesome box...
...complete with a painting of Football Carson on the lid! He immediately LOVED this box and said he would keep his "treasures" in it. For a while, it held the small toys Nana included with the box. Then it held some of his Matchbox cars for a little while.

But now, it is his Spy Box. Carson has decided, rather than being a "cooker at Subway," he now wants to be a spy when he grows up. (I think I prefer the cooker at Subway gig. Sounds safer.)

And every Spy Box, as we all know, would contain these essential elements:
Carson knows that all spies need a cell phone, a set of walkie-talkies, a gun, a Bakugan ball, and a pair of spy sunglasses. But those aren't just any sunglasses. Those are x-ray vision sunglasses...he claims he can see your bones with those things on!

When Molly started dance a few weeks ago, Carson asked if he could come along. Since football is over and soccer doesn't start 'til March, he has no extracurriculars going on currently. Daddy was a bit worried that Carson wanted to go to a dance studio. I figured (and I was correct) that Carson just wanted to see where Molly went to spend her time. And having 45 minutes of uninterrupted Mommy time is a nice plus!

The first week, he sat with me and we listened to Glee songs on Meggie's iPod. (Yes, we are total Gleeks in this house! Except for Daddy, of course. He thinks he's too cool for Glee.) But last week, he asked if he could bring some toys along. Sure.

So he emptied the contents of his Spy Box into a backpack (more portable that way) and brought them along. I brought my laptop and got some work done while he kept himself occupied. And occupied he was. He put on those sunglasses, put the gun in his pants pocket, and walkie-talkied with any boy in the dance studio lobby who would play along.

Watching people's reaction to Spy Carson, though, made me a bit sad. Most of the older kids -- who were playing hand-held video games while waiting for their sisters to finish dance class -- looked at Carson like he was odd. Some of the little kids, who were invited to play along, looked at Carson like they were afraid of him.

Thankfully he didn't care.

I'm anti-video games in our home...and that evening at the dance studio confirmed why I am so vehemently against them. Kids are so into being entertained by video games, they forget how to entertain themselves. And Carson (who is deprived at our house, with no video games except for his educational Leapster), put on those cool sunglasses and snuck around the cubbies and chairs of that lobby catching bad guys.

I thought it was adorable and clever that a 7-year-old boy would make the most of a pretty boring 45 minutes and keep us all safe from bad guys. However, most of the people in the room seemed shocked that he was entertaining himself in such a way, looking at him like he was weird...or perhaps a bit delayed.

If Meggie had been with us, she would have DIED from embarrassment at her little brother playing pretend in front of all those people. I encouraged him, played along when he let me (pointing out the extra sneaky bad guys he had missed and answering my real cell phone when he "called" me on his play phone), and enjoyed watching a little boy be...well, a little boy!

Forget the video games. I'll take a smart kid with a Spy Box ANY day!