guns and swords

Kwint had a fantastic week. He energetically worked hard feeling great and happy. Kaeleb and I suffered in misery with strep throat, while Brennan agonized over anear infection, and both boys got eye infections. I am glad, and not bitter at all, that Kwint managed to escape our doom. And wonder of wonders, after a day or two of good ol' Amoxicillin we were back in the swing of things, mostly.

Kaeleb is an interesting little guy. One one hand, he is very sensitive and empathic. He cares deeply, loves to read, is very smart and still loves to snuggle. Mostly though, he just loves "getting" bad guys. He uses any means available, be it gun, sword, lightning, fire bombs, etc. Most of his toys are not really what they are "disguised" to be. For example, his green baseball bat- you only think it's a baseball bat- it's a poison bat which shoots deadly poison into hornors and windstripers (his imaginary arch-enemies).

On Friday Kwint came home for lunch. Kaeleb had been playing quietly in his room, Brennan was napping and I was rather enjoying myself cleaning and doing laundry. Kwint went in his room to say hi. He came out laughing and said, "You need to go see what he is doing in there."

I walked in and found Kaeleb sitting on a footstool with another stool next to him. On the stool was a sword and a gun made out of chunky lego blocks. On the floor in front of him were several stuffed dinosaurs and Fortress Maximus (big transformer) and in front of them were neat rows of swords and guns. I said, "Wow- this is quite a set up. What are you doing?" He replied, "Palpatine, Darth Vader and me are selling guns for 4 dollars to all these other guys."

Go back in time 3 years and I was one of the moms who swore I'd never buy a gun for my son. By the time he was two he made one for himself out of styrofoam. I thought, "Well, my as kids my husband and brothers played with guns and they are all decent, model citizens. If I don't buy him one he will just make more." So, I bought him a four pack of squirtguns for a dollar, and the rest is history.

Now he has teamed up with Vader and the Emporer? What have we done!!?? (Actually, he told me they switched over to the force and are good guys now, or he wouldn't have gone into business with them. Phew!) We thought it was really funny on Friday, but after thinking about it all weekend we think maybe we need to get him more sports equipment and try to get him some new hobbies.

All boys have a warrior in them, a good guy- bad guy, good vs. evil thing, right? I remember my brothers playing GI Joe, army guys, transformers, and other such "boy" games. When they played with me, we pretended to be cats. Sometimes they played house with me, too. But I wonder what it is that comes with every guy that makes them so interested in getting the bad guy?

Our little Brennan is quite a funny one. He loves to play. Now that he is crawling he can get anything he wants and is very excited about it. He spends every waking moment crawling around the house grabbing things, carrying or pushing them over to the hard, tile floor and smacking them on it to hear the loud noise.

He has a growing vocabulary. I remember being amazed when our niece Abby starting saying words at 7 months, and now our 7 month old is saying Dada, Mama, Baba, and hi. Maybe it runs in the family, Kaeleb was 8 months old. It's really cute. He cries for his Baba when we give him a solid food he doesn't like and when he's tired. He cries desperately for Dada when he wants to be picked up. We are trying to decide if he is saying Kaeleb, too. He says bu-bub, which we thought was baba, but he says it slightly different and usually when Kaeleb is doing something funny.

We are looking forward to this weekend, and hope we have some good stories to tell next week.