Charles spent the morning lazing in bed reading Foxtrot.
Later, while getting goody bags together for Alice’s party, I found an old goody bag with a big sticky hand in it.
Mom: No sticky stuff on the walls!
Dad: What about sticky stuff on Charles?
Mom: That’s OK.
Dad: Hey, Charles, come down here!
Charles: No! I know your trick and I won’t fall for it!
Gosh, how did he figure it out? That’s a clever boy indeed.
Later, after Charles and I cleaned up the basement (Corwin was off for an overnight at Colin’s), Charles and Alice raced cars on the now open floor. Unfortunately, Alice’s car kept running out of gas.
Later Alice and Charles had a falling out because Alice hit Charles with a padded sword or dropped the entire armory on him, it wasn’t clear from Charles’ after action report. While Charles was laying on the couch moaning, I said that, because I was a very nice Dad, I would get a hammer and use it to hit one of this toes straight on. Then every other concern he had, such as what Alice did to him, would disappear and the only thing he would care about was how much his toe hurt. I went over to his workbench and pretended to get his hammer. I came back and swung at his toe. He was freaking out until he realized my hand was empty. At that point he started mocking me for not actually hitting his toe with a hammer. “You didn’t hit me, you didn’t hit me!”. I pointed out that this was not the optimal strategy for a boy who didn’t want his toes whacked with a hammer.