DS

Satchel and Jiro LOVE their Nintendo DSes. There's a feature called "DS Download" that allows them to play together despite being on separate devices. One of the DSes came with Mario, but they were both able to play it at the same time.

Unfortunately, this feature doesn't work the same with all games. Sometimes both players have to have the same game in order to play together. So for the monkeys that meant we needed TWO copies of Lego Batman.

This was the greatest thing ever, until all of their hard work somehow got erased. They were constantly stealing each other's cartridge in order to have higher levels & more players, so maybe that had something to do with it. (I'm not exactly sure how it all works.)

And of course, there are days when they just absolutely do not want to play together. This does not mean that they won't sit and watch the other play for hours.

Last week, Satchel took the Nintendo craziness to a new level when he gave Mario to one of the older boys at school. This boy apparently offered to beat all of the levels for Satchel. It took him a week to do it, but he did. I thought for sure the levels wouldn't transfer once Satchel put the game in his machine, but I was wrong.

Warren and I spent a week telling Satchel how this maneuver was what we would call cheating. We also tried to explain that the point of having various levels, was so that you could practice and be rewarded. We reminded him of how he learned to play Lego Star Wars and how he is now super awesome at Star Wars.

I'm pretty sure he just smiled and nodded the whole time we were talking, because he has been nothing but 100% thrilled that he now has access to every Mario level ever made.

We have banned him from sending out other games to older boys, and he has somberly agreed.

I'm still going to check his pockets.

Oh, and the other DS feature that Satchel absolutely loves and thinks is totally amazing? The calendar. The fact that his DS tells him what day it is astounds him.