Sam and Charlie in Erie

When we arrived in Erie, P was ready for some peace and quiet. It had been a long day of hiking and creative problem solving (designing his super-car) for him, so he sequestered himself indoors with a ton of new toys and just chilled. I was a little concerned his recent avoidance of peer play would spoil his chance to catch up with his buds, but he eventually came around.

And these boys are really, really sweet. And they love all of P's favorites things. In the evening they played outside - where Sam captured a frog - and then ran like crazy from all of the little neighbor kids (plus P) chasing him. They were devilishly enthused with their new "pet," something Aunt B, Aunt Les and I didn't really understand. Charlie and Sam's dad reassured us that general molestation of small animals is perfectly normal for boys :) and we left him to watch the mayhem until the frog was peacefully elsewhere.

The next day they quickly fell in to pillow fighting and causing a general ruckus. Poor P, he gets so easily carried away. At one point, his pillow lost, he grabbed the closest item (a metal bucket) and chucked it. Ummm. So we headed to the playground for them to bounce out some excess energy and then settled in for lunch before we departed.

But we didn't get out of the house before P discovered guns. He'd found one lying around the night before and held it up to me. "What's this, mama?" The most violent thing he's ever seen is Peter Pan, so I told him it was a gun, like a mini of the canon Captian Hook has. He didn't seem very interested and dropped it back down. But the next day, after lunch, he found bigger ones, ones that made rat-a-tat-tat sounds. Oy. So he and Charlie ran around pointing them at each other, or me. I don't know that P has put it all together yet (what three year old truly comprehends killing?), still calling them "poofers" or "bangers" on occasion, but he did tell Ethan the boys had guns. And his eyes glowed when he said it. While I'm not freakishly anti-toygun, I'm also a fairly big peace-lover :) so we'll see how it all plays out. I'm betting (hoping? wishing?) that distance and time fades even the coolest machine-gun from his memory....