Something old, something new.

My child is a whiz. When I say whiz, I mean she's very intelligent when it comes to trickery. Is this a good thing? I don't know. It's cute as heck right now. I'll let you know how I feel about it at a later date.

Anna has a habit of bringing me small pieces of lint and paper that she finds in random places around my house. Motherhood has made me lazy, I'm not going to lie, so, ahem, some minor details of my house keeping have slipped maybe just a tad. There's plenty of paper and lint for her to pick up, so it keeps her busy. That's why I don't vacuum. Ok?

So, she joyfully walks up to me, hands me the lint, I say, "Thank YOU!" in an exaggerated tone to let her know that I appreciate her help - hopefully this will train her to do chores later in life. She usually smiles and walks away to find her next lint casualty.

Well, lately I've noticed that she will have a piece of lint or paper in her left hand, walk up to me with an empty right hand, pat my hand with her right hand and then walk away pretending the whole time that she did, in fact, give me the lint even though it's still in her possession. What makes this little "exchange" even funnier is the look of pure "evil" on her face when she does it. I can see the little wheels turning in her head as she does it --> Here, mom, lookie what I found! ((pretend to hand it off to mom)) HA! Dumb mom fell for it again. 1 for Anna. 0 for mom. ((walk away with a smile/smirk on my face)) <--- Earlier today she found a pen on the floor. The mom side of me invisions her running with the pen, slipping on the floor, pen goes down throat, make a mad dash to the ER. Could this happen? Sure. Would this happen? Probably not. I've inherited my own mother's paranoid gene - YAY for genetics. Anyway, Anna tried the fake hand switch on my husband, turned around and walked away. It's hard to sit there with a straight face because we both know that Anna thinks she's pulled the wool over our eyes. She's outsmarted us. She's a genius. My husband called her on her little trick and eventually wrangled the pen away from her. Did that make her change her ways? Nope, she still continued with the pen/paper, empty hand switch the rest of the day. So, see, she is a whiz. Or conniving. We haven't figured it out yet.