Indoor Baseball

Right now the kids are in the other room screaming at each other. Its escalated to the point that I normally would intervene but I'll try an experiment and just let it work itself out. Oh, they just ran in here tattling on each other. Wait, now they're laughing and running back out...
Yesterday Archer received a plastic baseball and bat from Awana and the kids spent the rest of the evening playing indoor baseball.

Game: Batter sits on the floor with the bat, pitcher sits approximately five feet in front of batter and rolls the ball to the batter. Batter "swings" the bat (sweeps it across the carpet) and hits the ball. Pitcher crawls to retrieve the ball.

Potential Improvements: Batter actually tries to "run" the bases by crawling to predetermined landmarks in the room. (This is just my idea, they don't know enough about baseball and didn't have enough time for this to develop.)

Potential Evolution (when parents leave the room): Batter hits the ball more and more violently until the ball no longer stays on the floor but actually flies through the air. Pitcher no longer rolls the ball but starts throwing it. Crawling is too slow so all players stand up and run to chase the ball. No one sits on the floor anymore, the bat is being swung for real and the ball is being thrown randomly (because a 3 year old pitcher doesn't have good aim yet) at the batter. Someone gets hurt. Or more likely, something gets dented, knocked over, or broken.

I sometimes marvel at the amount of "what will happen next" thinking I've learned to do. "What will happen when..." And after six years of parenting its so automatic. What's more surprising is when I forget to think this way and then I'm shocked by what happens. And then I catch myself thinking, "Why didn't I see that coming?"