Mr. Zippity Loses His Eye

Sean
(In his best He-Man voice)
"For the honor of Grace Skull, I am SPIDER-MAN!"

Caden
(In his best He-Man voice, too)
"Me TOOOOO!"

Sean
"Oh my gosh, Caden! Bruce is chewing Mr. Zippity!"

Like all kids, mine have a habit of leaving toys around. I nag and threaten to throw toys away if they don't show me they care for them. But it's pointless. They're kids. And it isn't a crime to forget to put their toys away. It is, however, a different story when the toy doesn't belong to them.

Caden's weekend project is Mr. Zippity's Travel Log. Each kid in his class will have a chance to take a stuffed animal zebra home for the weekend, take pictures with him, and journal their time together. On Monday they are to bring the travel log and zebra back to class and talk about it.

Caden was so excited to have Mr. Zippity! He ate dinner with him, did homework with him, even brought him to his morning babysitter's house. It was so cute and I thought the project was really sweet.

And then something incredibly ... what's the word ... Common. Yes common. Something incredibly common happened.

Mr. Zippity was found in the mouth of Bruce, our 5 year old bloodhound mix. I couldn't fix it. I sewed his face up and hand washed him. But he was permanently damaged. I ended up purchasing a replacement on Amazon. Thank goodness that store had it.

Caden was so sad but more than that, he didn't want to tell his teacher that he wouldn't be bringing her zebra back. Hopefully this will be a lesson for him--take care of toys!

The culprit. Bruce is known to steal stuffed animals and chew their eyes out. I don't know what it is but he won't do anything else but take out the eyes. Sometimes a nose if its shiny enough.

Caden's tree frog was found mutilated under the dining table.

Sean's Kanga was found under my bed. Thankfully he paid no attention to the baby in her pouch.