bear/cub love

Her name is Sylvia. She is very smart, very sassy and Henry fell in love with her at art camp (a mere year and a half ago). There have been others who he has called his girlfriends at different times since meeting Sylvia, but his love seems to come back to her. Over and over again.

She's been going to McDonald's on Fridays for lunch, just as we do occasionally (you know I'm joking, I'm there like clockwork on Fridays). Henry gets so excited to see her, he asked as we are driving up if she 'will be there', if they 'can play together', will she 'be eating chicken nuggets like him'?

Luckily, she arrives shortly after we've nearly finished with our meals (and apparently doesn't have the same 'no playing until you eat most of your lunch rule' like we do, as she immediately started playing with Henry and a friend that came along). They disappeared from sight into the McDonalds tunnel of love (umm, play area).

A while later, I saw it happen, other mom intervention. Sylvia's mom was talking to my son with this momma bear face defending her bear cub. Henry and Sylvia came over to my table after the discussion. "What did you do, Henry?"' I asked. Sylvia perked up "He spat on me". I couldn't believe it, my son does not behave like this (at least very, very rarely does he). Of course, it was an automatic time out. 'Turn your back to the wall, I do not want to see your face'. Sylvia spoke up again, 'that's okay, my mom already talked to him'. I told her in ear shot of her mother 'that it was my job as Henry's mom'. (See, I can be a momma bear, too).

Henry sat in his time out, he turned and peeked, looking sad that he was missing out on play time. After his time was up, I talked to him. 'Henry, you never spit on someone, ever'. He replies 'I was just talking to her, Mom. I wasn't trying to spit on her'.

That's when my heart sunk. I squeezed my boy really hard and told him that I was sorry. I realized what had happened. When Henry gets excited, he drools; he's done it since he was six weeks old and continues still at almost five years old. Poor Henry was just so excited to be talking to Sylvia that he started salivating causing him to 'talk and spit', onto poor Sylvia, the love of my little boy's life.

(Let's just hope that this problem resolves before he's sixteen, otherwise dating for him might get a little more complicated.)