Day 1430 - Caught with His Pull-Ups Down

I don't want to say that Andrew has learned to lie, but rather he has learned to cover up the errors of his way.  He knows when he has done something wrong.  He knows when he fesses up to it, he will get either get punished or stoned.  So he conveniently plays dumb and does not admit the truth.  Regretfully for him, he does an awful job.

Here are two examples of his failed cover-ups.  The first one involves dry erase marker pen all over the coffee table.  Emma and Andrew have their own big ass dry erase marker activity book.  While they were playing with it, Lisa turned around and noticed a large mark on the table.

"Scott!" she screamed.  "Look at this!  There's dry erase marker all over here!"

"Better dry erase marker than cocaine," I said trying to give some perspective to the situation.

"Andrew, did you do this?" questioned Lisa.

"No, Emma did!" accused Andrew.

Emma looked shocked when she was labeled the culprit.  "I didn't do it!  I didn't do that!"

Upon further investigation, Lisa took Emma's dry erase marker and noticed it was dried out; when she tested Andrew's marker, it worked just fine.  In the immortal words of the late Johnny Cochran:  If the pen don't fit, you must acquit!

I'll agree with you that Andrew's first lie wasn't too amateurish, but this second lie would make Pinocchio look like a pro.  After dinner and fruit, the kids get a little dessert.  It's usually one toddler cookie or two fruit gummies.  This night, the kids got to take some fruit gummies.  Lisa instructed them to only take two from their goodie bag.  But when Lisa turned around (I think we are noticing that Lisa needs to pay more attention to the kids...), Emma accused Andrew of taking more than two gummies.

Lisa saw Andrew with two gummies on his plate, but caught a glimpse of a third gummy in his hand.  Lisa decided to give Andrew a chance to turn himself in by asking him, "Andrew, what do you have in your hand?"

Andrew glanced at his fist and said, "Nothing..."

Lisa gave him one last chance, "Andrew.  One more time.  What do you have in your hand?"

Andrew stared at Lisa blankly and finally said, "A sandwich."

A SANDWICH?  Come on, boy!  You've got to think of something better than a sandwich!  When I was young and got caught with a nudie magazine, at least I had the wit and sophistication to come up with Henry Gray's Anatomy of the Human Body!

When we catch our kids trying to hide something from us, we do try to use the word "truth" more than "lie" so we can emphasize to them how important it is to tell the truth to us.  Covering up your tracks is just something we pick up through life because who really wants to get in trouble.  But hopefully, Lisa and I can teach our kids that there is something honorable and worthy about the truth.  Until they start telling us things in their teenage years that we really don't want to know about.  Lying will be perfectly acceptable in eight to ten years.