"Bad" Words.

 Water war over the wall.

Paper airplane making bonanza.

These three little blonde boys are so fond of each other its funny.  And they are busy enough on different schedules (and school camp and travel for the neighbor boys) that their time together is just sparse enough to stay special.  Special enough that P asks if he can go see them. every. day :)

And after the mum and I sat giggling at the boys' water war, waged over the fence, she pointed out to me, again, how fab P is.  The water was off, the boys were wet rats rolled in mud and P (hoping to keep the good times going) quickly quipped, "Wanna try and melt some glue sticks with magnifying glasses?"

"See?"  She nodded at me as the whirling mudballs moved back towards our backyard, "storybook character."  Which is sweet to hear, since I sometimes miss the, erm, romanticism inherent in his messes....

And while there are plenty of differences between the boys to keep us all on our toes, their mutual appreciation of fun projects keeps them busy and, mostly, out of trouble ;)

Meanwhile, I'm still getting used to P disappearing for periods of time, sans Mama.  They'll all flit over to their house for 15 minutes, then back to ours, then whir out front... and the house is So Quiet at these times, its just... weird.

But it gives P a chance to have, not only anonymity and independence, but stories.  As they go their separate ways, he's so excited to tell me what's been happening, what he's seen, what they did...  And then, the other night he said, "Mama, Abe said a really bad word."

This seemed a little shocking to me, as the child says "fuck" pretty regularly (at least for a 6 year old....)  We've mentioned to him the words he uses that probably won't be so well received by general society and occasionally encouraged him to reconsider his word choices when we're out in the wide world, but otherwise haven't sweated the stuff.  E and I have had long (sans child) chats concerning the subject and the general hypocrisy of it all, not to mention our seeming inability to occasionally curb our own curses....

At any rate, the child reported that he was worried I wouldn't let him play with Abe anymore if he shared, but he wanted to share.  (I'm assuming this came from our chat about how the wide world would possibly receive P's profanities;)  I assured him I was not worried and that his friendship was totally safe.  And so he told me, the horrible, awful thing his friend said.

"Stupid.  He called Emil stupid."  

This, from the child who, thinking he had forgotten the grocery list just that afternoon had said, "Oh fuck.  I forgot the list."  I was so glad  I was facing the sink when he shared :)

But also kinda tickled that he'd discerned the difference between personal expression (his forte in the fuck realm) and name calling (something he never hears at home.)

As the boys played on the floor yesterday, I heard P politely say, "Abe, could you please not call someone dumb?  It feels so unkind."  Abe, "Yah, ok."  LOL.

Then, as we lay waking up this morning, he told me his plans.  "If anyone ever calls my sister a scaredy-cat or crybaby (two things Abe has called his younger brother) I'll..."  And then a long, drawn out description of the planned atrocities were described.

So, name calling, not looked upon highly, tar and feathering, fervently appreciated....  I'm fascinated to see how this actually plays out, once the baby isn't just an imagined ideal :)