I'm Amazed At What He Understands.

The Boy after getting ahold of my

make-up once before.

The other day, I walked into my bathroom and caught The Boy, as I often do, red-handed getting into my make-up drawer. He gave me that sweet, hard-to-resist, innocent smile and willingly handed over two of the three items he had commandeered but then quickly turned and made a run for it with the last remaining item.

His escape plans are not yet to that "thinking it through" stage as The Boy ran straight into the closet and found himself up against a wall. Burrowing his still smiling face into the wall and clutching his prize possession tightly to his chest, I gave him the opportunity to make the right choice and hand over my jar of mineral foundation.

I prefer to only use brute force to pry something out of a child's hand when absolutely necessary - like when one of them grabs the remote and changes the channel during the last few minutes of Lost - otherwise, I prefer to use these times to teach about making good decisions.

He chose not to make a good decision and continued to hold tight to the make-up jar. I asked him two more times to give me the make-up jar but he was having none of it. Because he's so stinkin' cute, I find it difficult to get mad at him. To be honest, I find it hard not to laugh sometimes.

So I resigned myself to sit on the floor and cross my legs at which point The Boy promptly sat down in my lap. I wrapped my arms around him and spoke gently in his ear, "You know, a mother shouldn't have to fight with her son over make-up".

He quickly hopped up, turned around and gleefully handed me the jar. I think he was afraid word might get out.