Day 1,344 - Captain America Goes to the Hardware Store

I am not above bribery.

There, I said it. I know that many a parent has claimed to have a code that they will not break...ever. I know that early on, it feels like one can keep that promise to themselves. That they will never give in. I'm here to tell you that eventually that moment will come when you are willing to bribe your kid to make your own life easier. Actually, on second thought, I prefer the term "incentivize". Sounds less harsh than bribery.

Recently, Bethany and I reached the point where we had to incentivize Ethan in order to finally get him to poop in the toilet instead of waiting for naptime when he could just go in his pull-up. The rule was that when he received ten stickers on his poop chart, then we would take him shopping for a toy of his choosing. Oddly enough, once that first successful bowel movement occurred, it didn't take him any time at all to fill out his chart.

When the time came for Ethan to pick out his reward, he and I headed to Five Below to begin our search for the perfect reward. While I figured we would eventually have to go to Target or something of that ilk, it didn't take Ethan long to decide on the perfect reward: a Captain America costume. Luckily for us, this costume was even one that he could put on all by himself.

Decision, decision, decision.

Over the past few weeks, Ethan has spent many an hour cosplaying as Captain America and fighting evil all over our house. Of course, there was one slight thing missing from his ensemble: Captain America's iconic red, white, and blue shield. Therefore, this morning, I set out to rectify that. Armed with a plastic Spider-Man ring, the lid from our animal cracker jug, and a print-out of Captain America's shield, I got to work. By the time I was done, Ethan now had a shield of his very own to proudly brandish when fighting imaginary Nazis.

Ethan loves pretending to be Captain America so much that it's been pretty much impossible to just keep the costume at home. For example, it hasn't been out of the ordinary for him to wear it to school when dropping Ellie off or picking her up. However, he has recently decided to up the ante of where he wears the costume. Over the past couple of weeks, he now is a firm believer that he needs to wear his costume to the hardware store.

It started simply enough last week when we made a quick trip to Ace Hardware to get, you guessed it, hardware. Since we couldn't find exactly what we wanted there, we had to make our way to Lowe's. In both stores, Ethan paraded around, proudly sporting his Captain America costume. My favorite moment of our Lowe's trip had to be when an employee thought she heard me telling Ethan that we needed to find the bathroom. In reality, we were looking for bathroom hardware. Her response was that "Even Superheroes have to stop fighting crime and use the potty from time-to-time!"

While I assumed wearing the Captain America costume to the hardware store was a one-time thing, Ethan certainly proved me wrong today. First, Ethan again wore his costume to school to drop Ellie off. From there, we were going to go to Smithville for storytime. However, we had about an hour to kill before storytime began. Therefore, we made our way to Menards so that I could price some things for a proposed home project of mine. Ethan asked innocently if he could go into the hardware store dressed as Captain America. My proposal was that he could as long as his shield stayed in the car. Therefore, I once again found myself wandering the aisles of a hardware store with a superhero by my side.

It actually is pretty fun to go to the hardware store with a superhero. For one thing, everyone is sure to smile when they see Ethan traversing the aisles.  More importantly, he'll only be a kid once. If he wants to go to the hardware store dressed as a superhero, it's not like it hurts anyone. In fact, I'd bet that he brings joy to pretty much anyone he meets. That's a pretty cool thing if I say so myself.

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