Happy Stuff: Toy Guns

I never, ever thought I'd allow toy guns into our house (or candy or this much princess paraphernalia or the entire Disney movie canon). My son John, at almost 4, is obsessed with all kinds of weapons. He has amassed a cache of plastic swords (his obsession circa five-minutes ago). He's now moved on to semi-automatics. Eve's pretty handy with a saw'd off Toys R Us special herself. Although I have yet to make a purchase, the two search and destroy whenever they sense that someone's packing plastic heat. Yesterday John woke up from a power nap and got into one of his crying jags. After 30 minutes of it, I'd exhausted every trick in the book (ignoring him, quietly sitting next to him, getting a glass of wine and reading catalogs in his room, giving him gum, yogurt sticks, TV. No dice). So I called Jack, our 10-year-old neighbor, who's helped me out of many a trying spot with the kids. "Jack, can you help out cheer John up? Bring comic books and guns." Like any self-respecting super hero, Jack was here within the minute, armed and dangerous. "Look who's here John! And he's got guns!" Tears? Who, John, sob? Within a nano second or two, John, Eve and Jack were tearing around the house, laughing and shouting. Genius on my part struck (again) and I just opened the back door just as their whirlwind passed, gently guiding them out of the house into the backyard. They played hard and happy for 30 minutes (at which point Jack got bored, can't blame him). It gave me enough time to semi clean the house and get dinner almost on the table. Team work! Toy guns!