The Aliens in my House

Picture of the Aliens. They may look like adorable little boys in their Christmas outfits (they even chose their own ties), but looks are deceiving.......today they might as well be aliens.

ALIEN #1--otherwise known as Spencer: I would like to know what 3-almost-4-year-old gets the concept of delayed gratification. Because this little alien does. Cameron has been an angel to share his DS with Spencer. Despite his generosity, we have had many a fight over the DS. Since Spencer's birthday is Feb 1st--we thought we would get him his own DS and the exact same game as Cam. Sweet, problem solved. Or so we thought. The fighting has escalated to the point where we told Spencer last Saturday that we would go to Wal-Mart that very day and get his birthday present early. We explained that he will still get other presents, but that will be his main gift. The little stink wanted to wait for his birthday. In fact, I ask him every day if he still wants to wait and he does. Dude, I would take it early---birthday, schmirthday. See---alien.

ALIEN #2--Cameron. This might have more to do with him being a boy, than him being Cameron, but it's still weird to me. What is it with boys and video games????? Seriously. Cam had a playdate today with a boy in his Kindergarten class. They pulled out their DS's and I went to clean the bathrooms---20 minutes later I come out to total silence. Cameron on one end of the couch and his friend on the other. No talking, no interaction----hello boys. I told them to turn off the DS's and go play with toys. They obeyed right away, but 5 minutes later I headed down to clean the basement bathroom and they were setting up the Wii. Holy Crap----I kept my cool, but firmly told them to turn off ANY video game they had and to pull out the imaginext castles and play. There was seriously 20 minutes of whining and " we're bored". Finally they listened to their mommy and got out all 3 imaginext castles and had a ball for all of 20 minutes before his friend's mom came to pick him up.

So to all of my friends and family reading this with boys---what do I do about the friend/video game thing???? Video games are only played on Friday/Saturday, unless a friend comes over, then I normally allow 45 minutes, but it is NEVER enough for them. They are like lost little creatures when it's time to turn off the games. I understand that it's winter and when the weather IS nice they are good about playing outside. If anybody has any hints or strategies I would love to hear it.