My Life/ Uncle Todd would be so proud....

When Tyler was born I swore that he would never play with toy guns, army men or anything related, but as you can see from the picture I was full of it. I remember my Dad telling me I was crazy, all boys play cop's and robbers. I had this prefect image in my mind about how to raise a boy, well let me tell you by the age of two, that image slowly drifted away. When Tyler was little Todd was living at my parents house, so whenever I left Tyler over there he got to spend time with his future Uncle. I started to notice that when Ty would come home he would be just full of it. He would grab whatever he could and use it to shoot at things. He once made a gun out of Lego's and put it to my back, he was three, I flipped out and wanted to find out just what the hell was going on at these play dates at my Moms. Todd in his own choice of words told me that I was being over protective and CRAZY, all boys play like this. I didn't believe him and told him to stop teaching my son bad things, this was probably our first of many arguments between the two of us. As many of you already know we kinda had that special Love/Hate type of relationship from the start. I often would get upset about how rough him and Tyler would play, I now realize that was their special thing. All the swinging around, wrestling, I was convinced that I would get a call from my Mom stating that Tyler's arm would be pulled out of socket or something even worse. It did not matter how many times I would tell them not to play so rough, I knew as soon as I would leave the fun would begin. As Tyler got older and Todd joined the Army I just learned to relax about the whole gun thing. I mean look at me now, my son plays shooting games with his Dad on Xbox. I now look at things much differently, the saying boy's will be boys really does apply. Do I believe in guns? Hell no, I will never ever own one, but does my son play with Nerf guns, yup he sure does. At ten years old he still dresses up and pretends to be in the Army or his newest thing a member of a S.W.A.T team, but instead of fighting it, I see it as a gift from Todd, reminding me that he is still here, in my sons heart.