Grrrrr

You know that image of the mama bear protecting her cubs? Well she and I bonded today.

Today was play date #2. Last week we went to ChuckE.Cheese. Today we tried the McDonald's Playland. I've discovered that the key to being a happy and sane stay-at-home mother is the playdate, or fieldtrip. Anything to get out of the house once in a while. We met up with a friend of mine from town band. She is also a clarinet player and had a little girl just a week or so after I had Camille. She also has another little girl that is a toddler age, so it's a good play friend for Easton. Everything was going great. The babies were both sleeping (the planets must have been aligned or something) the children were eating chicken nuggets and fries and we had the Playplace (aka gerbil maze) pretty much to ourselves. Easton is fearless for the most part so he went to climbing and sliding right away. He climbed, crawled, slid, climbed, crawled, slid...so much that I quit watching after a while and enjoyed talking to Kim. But as fate would have it, I happend to look up and witness the following:
Easton is climbing from a lower level to a higher level. There is boy also on the lower level waiting to climb up. (He is wearing shoes which is strictly forbidden according to the big sign, but we won't talk about that). I guess Easton was not moving fast enough for him, so he HITS him square on the back. Easton turns around to look at the kid and he HITS him again on the chest.
By this time I have already stood up and started walking to the scene. The hitter climbs up and scurries through a tunnel. Easton comes to me looking confused. He tells me the whole story not knowing that I saw it. "That boy hit E-tee like this" (Demonstrates on himself). I ask if that boy should have to sit in time out. Easton says "No...... mommy tell him not to hit E-tee more" And then he goes to show me where the boy is in the tunnel so I can tell him.
I'm not sure what is cuter, the fact that Easton didn't think that this crime was punishable by use of time out or that he thought the kid deserved a warning from mommy first. So what did I do? Knowing that the hitter's mother was at the table next to us I tried to make sure that I repeated everything that Easton said so maybe she would hear and then I marched Easton inside to buy him an icecream cone.

Minutes later the hitter attacked Kim's toddler on the steps. She is not as brave as Easton and was content to go up and down the same three steps. She sat on the bottom step to take a rest and the hitter was coming down the steps. Pausing at the second step he looked down and stomped his shoed foot on her little hand. She got an icecream cone too.