Peter, the iconoclast

So as part of our hardware store journey (see yesterday), Peter and I also went to our local independant bike store, located in the same little shopping center. Recently, in a fit of weakness, I let Peter pick out this cute plastic bike horn at Target, which he honked and honked and honked until he crashed his bike a few days ago and the horn broke off the handlebars. He was crushed. It felt tragic. I was crushed by the prospect of yet another epic journey to Target, where we'd recently seen that their bike accessory section did not have bike *bells,* which is on Grace's list of must-have items (it strikes her as a more dignified version of the horn, and I can kind of see that.) So - Peter and I figured the local bike store might have both horns and bells, and it's close, and it would be great good fun. We went there. We saw many bike horns, which fell more or less into two categories: cute kid ones, which featured small plastic animals that you squeeze to get the horn business going, and cool, retro ones for bigger bikes. Peter rejected all the cute kid ones. The panda? Nope. The orca? Nope. The [shudder] plastic skull? Nosiree. He wanted a fancy, shiny, metal horn. They were a little big for his bike, but I figured what the hell. He's three, he's a man of the world, he can choose his own bike horn. So he picked a three-horn trumpet-looking one, and I picked a bell for Grace which reads "I <3 my bike" [that's a heart there]. Great! Good to go! And then Peter decided he wanted streamers. I looked at the options. His bike is red and black; I figured the white streamers would be fine. He figured the pink and silver streamers, just like Grace's, would be *much* better. Again, he's a man with his own aesthetic... so, short story long, here's the visual on his tricked-out bike: too-large fancy and deliciously loud horn, pink and silver streamers, happy three-year-old. Such is a morning in the life of mama and Peter.