Toddler Minded Nipping Turtle

Story Time!

David and Christopher have been growing this expanding foam turtle for a couple of weeks now. It’s the kind that starts out super tiny and then you submerge it in water and over time it grows to several hundred times its original size.

Last night we finally let Christopher open the bag it was in and take it in the tub to play with, and he had a lot of fun!

So tonight I thought I’d let David do the same because he’s been wanting to play with it all week and he didn’t get a bath last night, but when he came into the bathroom and saw the turtle already in the tub from the night before … he was very nervous.

He was also curious, and peeked over the side, but when I suggested that he take off his clothes – like I’d already done with Matthew and put him in the tub – he was not a fan of that idea at all.

I finally got him into the tub by picking it up and tossing it on the other side of Matthew, and then about sixty seconds later as the water level started to rise and Matthew started moving around, all of a sudden CRYING AND PANIC!

“TURTLE BIT ME!!!!!!”

It was then that I pieced together everything and finally realized … David thought that it was actually a real turtle!

And as much as I tried to reassure him that there was no possible way that this fake foam toy turtle BIT HIM, he was having none of it and I finally had to throw the thing in the sink to recover any semblance of a normal bathtime.

I also kissed the imaginary boo-boo that the mean turtle had apparently made when it bumped into his arm under the bubble bath…

Even so, that kid watched that turtle sitting on the edge of the sink like a hawk for the entire duration of his bath!

He also tried to warn Christopher about the turtle when he came in, but at least Christopher understood – thank god – that the turtle he’d been wearing on his head the night prior wasn’t in fact a real turtle in the slightest.

We even showed him how, unlike real turtles, this one happens to have Made In China stamped on his belly, which Christopher thought was pretty funny, but by then David’s trauma had already been done.

I really hope that kid doesn’t have nightmares about turtles tonight… 😛

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