Gunning and shunning

Now that we've exhausted the next door neighbour's fruit trees, the boys and I trundled off down the market to pick up some more fruit. The markets here are amazing, full of fresh produce farmed from just down the road. I like to head there whenever I can, but it is more difficult when accompanied by children. Luke has taken to helping himself to handfuls of blueberries (the wild ones, picked from the mountains, much smaller than the ones we get in the UK and sooooo good) as we pass by stalls. Adam likes to examine the peaches, prodding and poking them into peach oblivion.

But, the biggest drama of going to the market is at the entrance. For there, beckoning like a siren to lovesick sailors, is a toy stall. They don't sell just any toys. Oh no, they sell toy guns. Can there be anything more enticing to boys aged 2 and 4? To pass this stall requires strength, dragging, screaming, pleading and general maternal trauma and perseverance. Last time we went Luke got hold of one stand, full of guns, and pulled it over. There were tears all round.

Like all good middle class families today, the boys don't have any toy guns. That is not to say that guns do not feature in the Brits household (and have posted before about this here). Everything that can possibly be made into a gun is. Sticks (ones with little nodules that can be used as triggers are especially prized). The broom. Lego. Meccano. Kifla (a sort of crescent shaped Bosnian bread roll). In fact anything that can be pointed is also capable of being fired, usually accompanied by some form of rat-a-tat-tat noise. Luke hasn't quite got the hang of rat-a-tat-tat yet, he sounds more like some form of farting bear with a stomach problem but I get his intent.

So having braved the gun stall and all its associated dramas yesterday afternoon we were wandering back through the car park when Adam spotted a toy gun on the ground. It was broken into quite a few pieces which he carefully picked up and secreted away in his pockets. When we got home he tucked in under a chair and spent most of the afternoon working out how he could put it back together. I was actually very impressed, he really had worked it out and pretty much fixed it, so I put some tape over it to keep it together for him and he is now the proud owner of his first gun.

I'm not looking forward to going back to England and being the one responsible for introducing all the other kids to guns. We're going to be ostracized for life.

In other news the latest Best of British Blogging Carnival is up over at Rebel Mothers, so head on over for more tales from the parenting frontline.