Bad guys, princesses and eyeballs

Sad as it is to say, I have been having some trouble relating to my kid these days. I made it through his “trucks and cars” stage and even his various sports obsessions, but lately I haven’t been able to see the appeal in his various fascinations. Toby’s latest fixation is with eyeballs, shooting bad guys and…princesses.

These days EVERY conversation ends in SOMETHING to do with someone’s eyeball. What did you do at daycare today? We played duck duck goose and poked each other in the EYEBALL. Can you go and see why Mia is crying? Yes, it’s because her EYEBALLS hurt. Can you stand still while I put your sunscreen on? Yes. Just make sure not to get it in my EYEBALLS he says EVERY TIME before falling to the floor in a fit of eyeball-induced laughter.

When he is not ruminating over eyeballs, he spends his time running around the house making boyish shooting and “pooming” noises as he “gets bad guys” with his swords and “poomers”. (I draw the line at letting him use the word “gun”.) He then runs over to me in elated victory to announce that he has once again successfully eliminated all of the bad guys by shooting them (you guessed it) in their EYEBALLS. Which he says with a flourish before falling on the floor in peals of testosterone-driven triumph.

And yet his FAVOURITE after dinner activity is to put Dido on and dance around as a princess wearing one of Mia’s pink blankets. He also likes to pretend he’s driving a horse (the arm rest of the couch) and heading to the castle to marry a prince. Yesterday we went to get him new crocs for daycare and he picked out pink ones. He also chose the pink potty seat over the one with the racecars on it.

Sigh. I can’t keep up.

I am FUNDAMENTALLY opposed to guns. I hate them. I hate seeing kids play with them. I hate everything to do with them. It tears me up that my sweet innocent little boy has somehow found a fascination with them. WHERE did he get that? We have certainly never exposed Toby to guns, shooting OR pooming; he has never played video games and the only movie he watches (on repeat) is Toy Story 3. (Not to say it isn’t without its own creepiness, but at least there are no guns in it…) My only conclusion is that he has picked it up at daycare and I am trying hard to teach him that pooming bad guys just isn’t a game I am interested in.

I can’t say I’m all that keen on princesses, either, but it DOES serve as a welcome break from all the guns and bad-guy-getting.

So I guess that leaves me with the eyeball situation. Which, I have to admit, I just don’t GET. It’s hard to find the hysterical appeal of them. Maybe it’s my field of work; I have never really been all that good (or INTERESTED) in ophthalmology, and real eyeball emergencies in the office or ER have only ever served to increase my stress level, never left me guffawing in uncontrollable laughter as it seems to do for Toby.

And so I will do what most good mommies do in the situation I am currently facing; I will participate as I can; smile and encourage the good; redirect and dishearten the bad; marvel at our differences and wait for this stage to pass…