If Mom Says "No"...

If Mom says "No", just ask Dad. If Dad says "No", just ask Mom.

Does he not realize that that is the oldest trick in the book? And that while we are insanely busy with new baby and housework and errands, that John and I still do find opportunities to talk to one another?

Evan wanted to go out and play in the backyard. I felt sort of bad for the kid. It rained and rained yesterday, so we were going to take him to the neighborhood park today. The park shares a lot with a church. Since John and I are heathens and don't go, we thought it would be rather tacky to park our car in their lot, get out in our shorts and flip flops and head to the playground while their service was going on. So I was thinking about saying yes, that the little booger could go outside and play (with neighbor children I do not like, by the way). The backyard is muddy from the rain, and I told Evan that much. My plan was to have John see just how muddy before I gave him the green light. Then I overheard him talking to his father and heard John tell him to ask me something. Ha! Busted!

Kids can be so rotten! I have tried and tried to keep Evan from learning these little tricks. What tricks? Well, the one I just described, for starters. Or pouting and saying how we must not love him when we refuse to buy him something. Or insisting that chocolate ice cream will fix his headache better than a sound dinner will. Or "accidentally" leaving homework at school. But despite my best efforts to limit what he watches on television or make sure the children he plays with are good influences, or making sure he only plays appropriate video games, he learns this manipulative con-man stuff from somewhere. It is becoming my mission in life to discover the source and eradicate it from his life.

Or it could just be that we humans truly are rotten and manipulative by nature. That original sin really isn't a hoax set forth by the church to make us all feel rotten. And this is just Evan's human nature coming out. Whatever the cause, I don't like it. I miss the days of innocence when my little angel would never dream of lying to me, of resorting to trickery to get what he wants. Where did those days go?

This is just my wake up call. The innocence, no matter how diligently we guard it, will eventually fade. I'm just trying to delay the process!