Now that my 4 year old and I officially on what I like to call the "party circuit" (someone is turning 4 or 5 so we are invited and we must go, of course), with all the goodie bags my son has accumulated quite the pile of stuff -- small little toys like sticky lizards and tiny dinosaurs, stickers, bouncy balls, crayons, whatever. I try to get rid of them but throwing one or two away when he is not looking. So, once, I threw away one of these little toys, I think it was small notebook or something. It stuck along the side of the garbage bag and when my husband was throwing out the trash it was clearly visible through the white plastic bag. My son spotted this! I am telling you, they have freakishly excellent vision, these babies. Anyway, he spots this from clear across the family room and proceeds to interrogate us: "who threw this out? You are not supposed to throw out someone's things without asking! Someone isn't using their manners. It's not nice to throw away things that don't belong to to you" and on and on -- for about an hour straight! Then, just as it seemed like he forgot about his toy, the next day he was at it again. I felt so guilty that I apologized profusely, but then felt bad for apologizing -- I mean, it's not like he was playing with the darn thing anyway!
Oy. You never win. Only mothers can actually feel guilt over feeling guilty.
