Oh the lies...

and the deception... and the sneakiness...

The Son is growing up. And not in a good way. The Husband and I recently had our first ever "caught him in a lie" experience. It through me for a loop and although it was and is pretty hilarious, it still made me realize that my Baby Boy is growing up fast.

"Parent's Night Out" (PNO) at the YMCA, is The Night we look forward too all month. Free babysitting at the Y for three full hours! The Son loves it too and never forgives me if I forget to sign him up. I don't know exactly what they do with the kids while we're gone but it must be shangri la up in there because he doesn't want to come home when it's over.

So this past Saturday we got all prettied up, and proceeded to drive The Son over to the Y so that The Husband and I could go out on our date. The Y has rules that children are not supposed to bring items from home when going to Kids' Corner (when the parents work out) or during PNO. The Son knows this rule but doesn't like it. In all fairness to him, not all the parent's obey the rule so he does see other children bringing personal items from home but... not. my. kid. Generally, I am a rule follower AND I don't want to have to deal with the aftermath if he takes something and it gets lost or broken. So anyway, as we're driving over there, the Son says,

"You know, the great thing about PNO and the Y is, I don't have to bring anything but myself!"

That should have been our first clue that something was up. We get to the Y, I get him out of the car seat and he skips on into the building. As I bent down to say goodbye to him, I noticed that his hand was pressed up against his belly in a strange way and I instantly realized that he was hiding something under his shirt. A Bakugan card! The same Bakugan card that we told him he could not bring to the Y! I was shocked! The Son had never lied to me before, well, at least not this kind of lie that required planning and a set-up and down right devious behavior on his part! As soon as he was caught he started to cry. I told him I was very angry and disappointed. I knew I should march him right back out to the car and turn around and drive home but I just couldn't do it. The Husband (who was waiting in the car for me) and I really wanted to go out on our date. We really only get this one short date a month unless The MIL is visiting. So, I told The Son, who was still crying, that he was very lucky that Momma and Daddy wanted to go out on our date so badly and that he had to pull himself together and we would talk about this incident later. I took the offending Bakugan card, gave him a hug and sent him on his way.

When I got out to the car, I explained it all to The Husband who was equally shocked. Eventually, we got a big laugh out of the whole thing especially the "You know the great thing about PNO..." set up that The Son had tried to lay on us eariler. At least he's smart enough to lay his ground work, right? We didn't deal with the incident that night because it's pretty much bed time when PNO is over but the next day, we took away all his Bakugan toys and tv shows for two days which, for The Son was like a lifetime. I think he learned his lesson.

This time.

I'm sure there's much more to come and we'll be learning right along with him. Give me strength.

Sneaky? Who me?