It is hardly news to announce that I think my children are cute and that this makes it impossible for me to remain cross with them for any length of time. However, I have noticed a recent spike in Bundle's ability to talk his way out of trouble with an explanation that is so adorable that the only possible response is applause and/or laughter.
Bundle does not get himself into trouble too often, mostly because he is a pretty agreeable sort and also because he has learned at least some discretion. He would get in even less trouble if he remembered to word his little brother up in advance. He demonstrated this wonderfully well last night, when Honey Bear asked him to briefly leave his "Winnie the Pooh free computer game that we found on the internet" and come into the kitchen. We didn't hear what he said in response to that request, and given his prompt appearance, we would have been mightily impressed except for one thing.
That one thing was Cherub loudly enquiring "Bundle, why did you say BOTHER?"
Bundle didn't get in trouble for that, since we just thought it was funny, but having reached the age at which children stop being entirely upfront and flawlessly honest in all matters, young Bundle has had to think on his feet a couple of times lately.
The first was a week or two back. Bundle was quite keen to get back to playing "Dora the Explora's Animal Adventures" (does computer addiction run in the family, perhaps?), so much so that he came running out of the bathroom completely free of pants and headed for the computer. I, perhaps unreasonably, insisted that he retrieve, and wear, his pants before further computer games were played, if only because it was quite cold.
Bundle, after some insistence on my part, headed back towards the bathroom, but stopped a couple of metres short, and, lying on the toy room floor, announced he could go no further because he had "run out of muscles".
I suggested that I strongly suspected that he would be quite capable of walking back to the other end of the house once I told him he could return to the 'puter, and hence I suspected that he could also walk the two metres to the bathroom if he chose. He maintained what is best described as a dignified silence in response.
As it was the end of a long day, and he was genuinely tired after his cousin's birthday party, I decided not to make too big an issue of it, and so I retrieved the pants for him. Having put them on, he, slightly predictably, starting running towards the computer. I said "Oh, your muscles seem to have come back". He stopped for just long enough to look me in the eye and say, very seriously, "Yes, daddy. They were playing hide and seek".
I think this sort of creativity ought to be encouraged. And recorded on a blog so I can remind him about it at various birthday celebrations for the rest of time.
Bundle's best work, though, came when he was in much more trouble. I hesitate to record it here, as it involved admitting to a couple of things. One is that, despite all my good intentions before starting on this parenting thing, "bribing the kids to do stuff" is not as unknown a concept as it used to be. The other is that I got hustled by a three year old.
We occasionally use a reward system, which started during the period best described as either "toilet training" or "the longest living nightmare of my life" depending on how recent it was. Of the many things that we bribed Bundle with, the one that worked was a big bag of very small pieces of candy from one of those super cheap confectionary outlets. We bought an absolute heap of these things and they now occasionally get used for other things, like drinking foul tasting medicine without throwing a hissy fit.
Our usual approach is to start with a couple of pieces of candy as a reward, and then gradually phase it out once the children get the hang of whatever we are encouraging them to do. One morning, I had a memory lapse and forgot that we had phased out candy as a reward for whatever Bundle had just correctly done. Bundle knew it, of course, because Honey Bear had told him, but he asked me for it anyway in the hope thqat I had forgotten.
This is something we are fairly strict about. If one parent has said 'no' to something, asking the other parent behind the first one's back is heavily discouraged. Forgetting this, Bundle happily announced "Mummy, I got candy!", which lead to a couple of obvious questions from Honey Bear and suddenly Bundle was aware that he may need a way out quickly. It went something like this:
Honey Bear: Now, you know what I told you yesterday about this?
Bundle (meekly): Yes
Honey Bear: So you know that we don't get candy for that any more, don't you?
Bundle (still meekly): Yes
Honey Bear: So is there something you need to say to Daddy?
Bundle: (even more meekly) Yes
[Bundle turns to INC]
Bundle: You da maaaaannnn!
[INC & Honey Bear fall around laughing]
How, one wonders, could I possibly argue with that?
