Some Errands, My Son, and a Pair of Walkie-Talkies

Yesterday afternoon I needed to go run some errands. Nothing fun really, just dropping some stuff off at Goodwill, getting the oil changed in my Soccer Mom mobile (a.k.a. our van), and going to the grocery store. Despite the lack of any prospect of fun on these errands, Thing 2 wanted to come with me to "help". So the boy and I pile into the van and head out for our afternoon of errand-running.

Now, I've mentioned before that Thing 2 has a thing for superheroes. His current favorite among the superhero set is Iron Man. For Christmas, Santa brought Thing 2 a pair of Iron Man walkie-talkies. This gift was hours of fun for Thing 2 and his older sister, Thing 1. They had long conversations with them from the far reaches of my parents' house while we were there for Christmas. Very cute.

But since Christmas, the walkie-talkies have played a fairly minor role. We've really not seen much of them at all ... until yesterday afternoon. Apparently, they were gone but not forgotten.

As Thing 2 and I were about to leave, he handed me a walkie-talkie. I was instructed to put it in my purse because that's how he intended to speak to me while we were out. I'm sure anyone who happened to look into our van at a red light would've had a little chuckle at what they saw - Mom and son (sitting a scant 2 1/2 feet behind me) talking away on his Iron Man walkie-talkies.

We were gone for 3 hours and that's pretty much how we spoke to each other the whole time. He even wore it clipped onto his pants every time we went in a store or got out of the car. I'd hear things like this:

(static) "Uh, Mom. When are we going to get ice cream?" (static)
(static) "Sounds good. Over and out." (static)
(static) "Can we stop at Old McDonald's for lunch?" (static)
(static) "But I don't want to go to the grocery store!" (static)

So that's pretty much how our afternoon went - a new twist on running errands. It was kinda fun.