Alvin the Alligator

On Wednesday, Colin went to birthday party and got an alligator egg like this in the goody bag. He was immediately obsessed. He was carrying the thing around as much as he could, and went into a complete fit on Friday morning when he couldn't find it. I was hiding it as punishment at that point, based on the usual lack of picking up of the toys. You have to know what you can take hostage to get to them to get stuff done, you know?

Anyway, Friday night I gave it back him - at which point he wanted to put it in water to "make him alive." Huh, what? So I look at the box and indeed, H2O is what is needed to "hatch" this thing. Okay. We plop him in a cup and Colin and Seamus spend a good 45 minutes staring into it. Claiming they're hearing cracking, bubbling and what not. The shell eventually cracks and the alligator starts to emerge. As does the trouble. Colin says he can see the alligator, now named Alvin, breathing. Mmmm...okay. But then he gets all upset because "Alvin" has come out and is no longer breathing, and what are we going to do about that? Yes, Colin was honestly, truly, completely convinced he was getting a pet alligator out of the deal. I looked at Aidan and asked him to confirm that I was not the only one aware this was a fake alligator. I believe Aidan just said "duh." But Colin? Nope. CONVINCED this was real. HYSTERICAL if I suggested otherwise. I finally urged him to leave Alvin in the water and we'd see how he was doing in the morning.

Come 8am, Colin runs to check on Alvin. Somewhere in here he decides that Alvin had been alive but was now not and just a toy. Whatever. Crisis averted.

Now they're just loving the heck out of this little plastic thing. Joy.