On guard!

A few weeks ago, Bear and I attended a lunch at a fellow MOMS club member's house. That mom has two sons, ages 2 and 4. Those boys have so many toys that are BOY oriented (weapons, ninjas, etc.) that it makes me realize that I don't know what I'm in for! Anyhow, one of the toys that kept appearing over the couple of hours that we were there were these long foam swords. I think there were two of them, but every time Bear got anywhere near them, he'd start chewing on them! I kept putting them up high so he wouldn't ruin them, but they kept reappearing...probably due to someone's child who thought they were fun! I put them away no less than five times and thought I got them away from Bear before he did any damage.

Fast forward to a week or so later, when Bear and I attended a MOMS club board meeting. The mom who held the lunch is also on the board and somehow the conversation came to involve the success of the lunch. Someone asked her if her house took a long time to clean after all those kids were there, and she replied with something like Well, it wasn't too bad, actually! The only thing that even got broken were these foam swords that my boys have. Well, not broken...but bitten! They had little bites taken out of each end! I chimed in and said UH OH! I think I know who did that!! I offered to pay for them and she reassured me they were only from the dollar store and that it was no big deal.

Fast forward to another week or so later, when Max, Bear and I went to Target together. I asked Max to play with Bear in the dollar area in the front of the store while I visited the restroom. He complied and when I came out of the restroom, I walked into the dollar area to look around. I can always find junk in there that I need! I was perusing all the plastic dishes and baby socks when I came upon a bin of those damn foam swords! I thought, Oh good, they really did only cost a dollar! That mom wasn't lying to me to make me feel better! I relayed the story from the above two paragraphs to Max, thinking he'd be mildly amused, but he just nodded and started walking away to a different area of the store. I was thinking What's his problem? My stories aren't interesting enough? But when we got about halfway through the store, he shared the real story with me. He had shown Bear those foam swords while I was in the restroom, and the first thing Bear did was take a big hunk out of one with his teeth. Max buried it in the bottom of the bin and was trying to leave the scene before anyone realized what he had done! Yeah. I don't think a foam sword is anywhere in Bear's near future!