Home Alone...

In the summertime, Ben always hates having to make Safeway runs in the mornings. Whines and complains. Asks how many things I have to get. Blah blah blah. So starting this summer, after talking to some other friends with kids his age, I started offering to let him stay home. (Safeway is only 30 seconds away and I'm only ever gone a half hour or so) He'd always say no. But every time, I'd offer. Well, finally yesterday, he took me up on it. I was shocked when he said, "YES!" "You sure?" "Yes!" "You're not going to get scared?" "Nope... gonna sit here and play my DS."

I put his iPod Touch next to him and told him to text me if he needed anything. Taped my cell phone number to the back of the phone and put that next to him too. "Okay! We'll be right back! You SURE you want to stay here?"

"Yep."

Out the door we went. Came home a half hour later and it was a success. He was right where I left him.

Then I was putting groceries away and noticed the pantry door was open and there was white powder all over the floor. Weird. I hadn't baked or anything that morning...

"Ben?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened over here?"

"What?"

"Why is the pantry open?"

He wandered over and stood next to me, apparently also studying the scene.

"Oh."

"'Oh', what? What did you do while I was gone?"

"Um... this..." he said, and pointed to an open bag of powdered sugar on the shelf. Apparently he had helped himself to a handful of sugar as soon as I left.

"Seriously? You ATE powdered sugar?"

"Well, It was really.... yum!" he replied, grinning from ear to ear.

Sigh. After that we had an obligatory talk about trust and how if he's going to have the privilege of staying home when I run out, he can't do things he knows he's not supposed to do. He nodded and understood... I think.

I have to admit though, I was secretly kind of amused and wished I could have seen how it went down. It was like he just couldn't help doing SOMETHING "forbidden" while he had the house to himself... so a handful of sugar was the first thing that came to mind. LOLOLOL!! And I love that that's the first thing that came to mind... so innocent and kinda cute.  (does it make me a horrible mom that it made me laugh? When I recounted the story to Tom later, he thought I should have punished him....)