Demands and counter-demands

While Monkey is, of course, delightful, he does also possess some of the less adorable traits of your average four-year-old: whining, for one, I believe is something they do a lot of at this age. He tends to pick a theme and harp on it, sometimes for weeks - but then, he did that with the Spider-Man costume when he was only three (a prodigy!), and I stood up to it with a heart of stone for many months, convinced he'd finally grow out of it or have a birthday, one or the other. He did the latter. And got the costume and immediately started demanding Spider-Man gloves, and boots, and then a Batman costume and so on.

Recently he decided a ray-gun was the way to go. He used to have a ray-gun. In fact, it was his first gun-like toy: a pleasantly retro-looking thing that made an extremely irritating grating noise and generated sparks inside. (Not real sparks, I'm sure. Just some sort of spark effect.) It was a present from Franklins, which is a local restaurant with toy shop and wine shop attached, so that you can take the kids for a meal and bribe them with a present at the same time. Instant gratification for all.

Anyway, the ray-gun got broken lo these many months, as is the way with these things, and just the other day he seized upon the notion of it for his next thing-to-want. He spent a day or two whining at us that he reeeeally reeeeallly wanted a ray-gun, he'd love a ray-gun, he neeeeded a ray-gun et cetera, until we told him that he might get one for Christmas or his birthday, but only if he'd for the love of all things holy stop talking about it. He mostly did, eventually, stop, but brings it up again every now and then just to make sure we haven't forgotten, in case Christmas is suddenly upon us tomorrow or something.

So there we were in IKEA, he and I and Mabel, as is our wont, and he decided on a little foray into pestering me for the ray-gun. I really want a ray-gun, it went. I need a ray-gun right now. And I said stop talking about the ray-gun, and he did. As we went downstairs from the cafe into the kitchen goods, he shot a final wistful salvo: "I wish I had a ray-gun." I ignored it.

Earlier [I have to back up a bit here], Mabel and I had pottered about while Monkey enjoyed himself in the supervised ball pit, finding some curtain rings, and she had picked up several maps (the flyers they have everywhere for you to write down the name and number and location of your item before you go into the warehouse area) and wanted a pencil. Then she'd got a bit crazy with the running away and hiding, and I'd actually lost her for a perilous 30 seconds or so, so I had put her on my back in the Ergo, at which she was protesting a bit but not too much. She still had a map, though, and wanted to draw on it. However, I couldn't give her a pencil now for fear she'd stab me in the neck as her list-making got too feverish. (She's her mother's daughter, after all.)

As we continued past the pots and pans and big glass jars in which to artistically keep all your baking supplies, Mabel piped up in exactly the same tragic tone Monkey had used three minutes earlier: "I wish I had a pencil."