Saturday night, Thalia was in a mood that we fondly refer to as Two. As in, “Oh Thalia. Are you acting Two again?”
Nate offered her a grape and was met with an inordinately loud and screechy NOOOOO! I DON’T LIKE GRAPES! And so he took the grapes into the kitchen, shuffled them around on the plate, then brought them right back. And offered them again.
As jellybeans.
She ate them all.
The semi-smart, mostly sensible mom within me was cringing. We don’t tend to lie to Thalia. We don’t tell her that the playground is closed or that the ice cream store ran out of ice cream. (Although really, that did happen once. Ask Tony.) I do think that keeping things on the straight and narrow is a better long-term tactic even if I have to endure a few tantrums along the way.
So I corrected Thalia, “Daddy was just playing a joke on you, sweetie. He was being funny. It’s really a grape.” Too late. Thalia insisted that no it was not a grape, it was a jellybean. She even proceeded to separate the grapes from the jellybeans on the plate using some sort of incomprehensible assessment system, and show us exactly which was which.
So then I did what any semi-smart, mostly sensible mom would do.
I told Nate to get out the video camera.
What can I say, the whole thing was hilarious, what with her yelling MMMM JUICY JELLYBEANS! SO SWEEEET! for an hour all while popping grapes.
Cut to today, lunch time.
Thalia and I were bargaining chips for food, as in finish that half of your sandwich and you can have one more chip.
(The chips, by the way, were in part a passive-aggressive reaction to some sanctimommy on a message board last night who led with, “My whole family knows that the first person to offer soda, chips or candy to my three year-old is DEAD to me.” Like having a one-night stand with an ex, every so often I go back to that board remind myself why left in the first place.)
Thalia was respecting the trade-off pretty well, until she walked back to her sandwich, lifted it near her mouth, then turned her back to me and pantomimed taking a bite. “I did it!” she declared, before making an enthusiastic bee-line for the foil bag.
The deception! The chicanery! The outright lie!
I have no idea where she got it from.
