Blackie and Brownie

Mason's "big kid" friend Caleb introduced him to the wonderful world of Webkinz this summer, and he's been begging for one ever since. I told him he could earn one by reading 20 books for the summer reading program. (There was a stuffed animal prize offered by the library, but I missed the deadline.)

Mason read his 20th book last night, Carter's Diego book called The Rainforest Race, so we went on a Webkinz hunt this afternoon. We finally found a ton of them at The Perfect Touch gift store, which had more tempting goodies for me than for the kids. I tried to distract Carter so he wouldn't want a Webkinz, but he caught on immediately and adopted a Lil' Kinz pug puppy within seconds of entering the store. Mason picked up several before deciding on a rottweiler puppy.

On the way home, I was trying to help Mason name his puppy because his other animals are named Big Bear, Little Bear, and Puppy. I decided to help him get more creative. At my prompting, he started listing possible names. "I could call him Biggie, or Kitty, or.." he got really excited because he thought of the perfect name. Not Kitty, but it rhymed with Kitty and had an "sh" at the beginning. I made sure he didn't know what he had just said and then attempted to redirect the name ideas in another direction...trying desperately not to laugh. He finally settled on Blackie, and we helped Carter change his from Puppy to Brownie.

When we got home, we had to officially adopt the dogs on Webkinz.com so Mason could feed the dog, fix up his room, and play the games on the site. He had to come up with a username, and all versions of TrainBoy and SpaceBoy were taken. So he suggested BlackBoy. I pointed out that he's not black, so he suggested WhiteBoy. Luckily I was able to get him to go with his initials instead. Otherwise my first grader would be WhiteBoy2002 on the internet. Nice.