We had a fantastic weekend. The only things that would have made it better are if Jill's job had not required 10 hours of overtime last week, and if our young friend Alex had not gotten sick.
On Friday, Noah and Josie spent the night at Grandma & Grandpa's. Much pizza was eaten, many balls were played with, giggling and chattering abounded, and there were only an average number of 3 year old meltdowns.
And with all that freedom, did we have date night?
No. See frustrated job requirements above.
But I went out with friends who were visiting from out of town, and many of our friends who were here. I ate Ethiopian, shouted over the buzz at a loud bar, and generally had a kid-unfriendly time. While Jill worked.
When I picked up the kids on Saturday morning, I thought they were going to refuse to leave. They have Grandma & Grandpa wrapped around their little fingers.
Then we went to "the gear museum" with our good friends Dave & Liz, and their son Alex, and Patrick, and his kids Sam & Maggie.
Noah would live at the gear museum if he could, bathing with the small manta rays or maybe in the how-water-gets-clean exhibit, eating nothing but cheetos and pink juice from the snack store, and sleeping in the ship berth beds. Apparently he isn't alone, since we ran into 2 of his friends from school. I hope the other kids liked it too.
After some quiet time at home, Noah and I went to the hotel where our friends were staying, in the hope of going swimming with Alex. Unfortunately, after we all got down to the pool, Alex had a sick boy meltdown. We swam anyway, with Alex's daddy, then returned to see if Alex was feeling better. Judging from the bouncing and cheezit consumption, the answer was yes. Unfortunately, by the end of dinner, that was no longer true.
Once Noah was asleep -- in record time -- and Josie settled down, I went back out to meet up with another out of town friend. We determined that I had not actually seen Todd & Francis since their wedding, 13 years ago! It was fun catching up with them, reminiscing with Todd about our crazy high school adventures, and realizing how lucky we were and are.
On Sunday, we hit the playground with a re-recovered Alex and his parents and grandparents. Noah bossed everyone around and played "baseball" with Jill, Alex, and Dave, which Alex tolerated with awesome good humor. (We all were especially amused when Noah declared that he wanted Mr. Dave on his team. Um, buddy, your This Mommy went to college on a softball scholarship, while Mr. Dave and I were on the chess team. You sure about that?)
Alex has quite a batting arm! He hit the ball more often than not, even requiring the adult fielders to do some work to retrieve it! (Noah was a little bit of a poor sport over Alex's finesse. Hopefully he'll grow out of it.)
Josie joined the baseball players not too long after she figured out the rules.
The rules of baseball, according to Josie, are:
- Each person positions themselves in the dirt, 8-12 feet apart.
- Occasionally someone throws the ball, and other people hurry toward it.
- In between ball throwing times, you can pivot on your butt in the dirt, and also grab handfuls of it to toss in the air.
- If you are really lucky, you can stick some dirt or small rocks in your mouth before you get caught.
- Hide your friends' wallets/id so they can't get back on an airplane and go to Boston, so they have to stay here and hang out with us more and more. Oh wait, that wasn't Josie's rule. That's mine.
Needless to say, it was bath night and an early evening at our house.
Josie started at her new day care today. It was a little hectic at the beginning of the day -- I think she'll be going on the later side of the morning whenever possible.
. The first thing he made was a vaguely gun-shaped Pppptoo-er, for This Mommy.
Then he built a stack of wheels, and told me it was a "Sandwich Pppptoo-er. It pppptoos out sandwiches for you to eat! Eat this ketchup one, That Mommy!" Noah then pppptooed me 3 peanut butter sandwiches and some mustard. Something tells me I'm going to remain the cook here for a loooong time.
"Noah, do pppptooers hurt people?"
"No...they pppptoo things at you and you might fall down."
"What are pppptooers for?"
"Pppptooing."
A few minutes later, while coloring with markers, Noah explained to me that he was drawing a "weapon" which was a special kind of pppptooer. It was yellow, and it pppptooed circles.
This morning, Noah made a picture of a bubble pppptooer out of bubble stickers that the Easter Bunny gave him. "When you get a bubble pppptooed at you, you have to jump over it!"
So, I think there are a few concepts going on here for Noah.
When you hear the classic video game/movie "pppptoo pppptoo" sound, it comes from an object. You and I might call it a gun or a weapon, or maybe a laser. Noah doesn't see them exactly the same way, although he may be starting to get that they are related objects.
In Noah's world, pppptooers emanate something: bubbles, sandwiches, sounds, circles, things that might make you fall down. But they don't seem to hurt people.
This makes me not quite ready to think of them as "toy guns" although they are probably moving in that direction.
I have a mix of feelings and opinions about the issue of toy guns, and clearer views about real guns.
Let's tackle the easier question first: I would prefer that Noah not play in a house where there are real guns. I definitely don't want him playing somewhere with real guns that are not locked up. I've read too many stories about children -- mostly boys -- who accidentally shoot their friends because they had no idea it was a loaded, real, gun.
When Noah gets older, if he wants to learn how to shoot in a safe, controlled environment, ie riflery at summer camp or a similar well-supervised and out-of-the-house appropriate location, I'm ok with that. I think that him knowing that guns are not toys and must be handled carefully and with respect is extremely important.
Toy guns are a more gray area.
I think a flat out ban is ineffective, much the way Covert, Reno, and other commenters observed. I think it led me to lie about having the squirt gun, not to have no interest in squirt guns.
(And by the way, my first with-a-paycheck job was for the Milwaukee Gun Club, a recreational skeet shooting establishment. I never touched a gun while I was there, but I sold ammo, cokes, and beer, and worked as a trap setter and puller. I tell this to illustrate that it also apparently didn't drive me away from guns or "gun people." Whatever that means.)
I think that most people, including children, are capable of making the same distinction that Noah is already making: fantasy vs reality.
Pppptooers and the myriad of toy objects that emanate things are distinguishable from guns, even if they are shaped like guns and we call them guns. Video games where the object is to shoot something or someone also use pppptooers, even if the pppptooer creates exploding things/dying things results.
As Noah gets older and starts to understand what he is "really" pretending when he plays with pppptooers, and most likely stops calling them pppptooers, I think it is important for us to be talking with him about the risks and dangers real guns present.
I expect that the mix of literature on violent video games will get some intense review as Noah gets older. Damned if I'm going to let my kid unthinkingly play a game where they get points for sleeping with a prostitute and then ripping her off or killing her -- looking at you, Grand Theft Auto. But I don't want to give those games the allure of the forbidden, either. There may be age limits, time limits, location requirements (the living room where your Moms can interrupt or worse yet play along, springs to mind), and forced tedius and embarrassing conversations with your mother before certain lines can be crossed.
And I also think that commenters Eric and Richard make excellent points -- there are a lot of critically important issues that create the environment for many of the risks that guns then tip into crisis.
Jen, I think that ties into your excellent points, too. Modeling AND talking about the whole pantheon of our values is important -- critical, in fact -- for what we try to teach him about guns and pppptooers to make sense and to help him grow up into the kind of man we hope he will become.
So far, we haven't tried to talk a lot about alcohol, except that when one of us has a beer or glass of wine with dinner, we tell him that they aren't drinks for kids. We've let him sniff the drinks, to which he universally responds with "eeeeeeeuuuuuwwwww! YUCK!" We'll cross the line for discussing responsible drinking when we first see a tipsy or drunk person that he might notice.
Same with cruelty, only that's already more hands-on. We don't allow Noah to hit or kick or otherwise hurt other people. We haven't quite sorted out how to handle him pretending to hurt himself to get our attention -- I lean towards ignoring/downplaying, Jill leans towards intervening/stopping. We model and discuss how to be gentle with Josie, where he an and can't touch her, like not putting his fingers in her mouth, but allowing him to tickle her belly, for example.
Like Tammom said in her comments, what it comes down to is giving Noah and Josie the best tools and training we can to help them learn how to make good decisions.
Only time will tell if we've done a good job.
(On a sort of related note, have you seen 
Recent Comments