I sit on a throne of lies!

My mother lied to me when I was little.

I'm not mad.

I realize now, as a mother, that sometimes telling little fibs here and there is necessary and is usually beneficial to both parent and child overall.

Well sometimes more the parent, but we deserve a little break sometimes right?

Case in point would be this Saturday.  Finding a sitter this time of year can be very challenging as a single parent.  Finding someone who is not at the mall trying to do their holiday shopping with all the mounds of crazies is hard to find on a Saturday in late November.  Usually I try to cram my holiday shopping in at 24-hour stores while the kidlet is at a sleepover or quick shopping trips on my lunch break.  Saturday I was feeling festive and merry after sitting through Mason's Christmas concert at daycare and decided that some Christmas shopping was in order.

Mason held up pretty well after shopping for hours at the crowded mall wherein his mother scolded an old man in front of an entire line of people at the dollar store for cutting in line.  People applauded, it was quite awesome. As if that wasn't enough, I then dragged him to another store to pick up more items.  After that he was pretty much done with shopping (such a trooper), but I wasn't done just quite yet.

I wanted to check out the toy sale that is only in our area for a week.  I heard they had some pretty excellent deals.  I had tried to go on my lunch break the day before but the line-up was wound around the building.  With only half an hour left until they closed, I figured it would be pretty empty, great time for some ideal shoppage.

Mason was not having it, so mama had to lie. Here's how it went....


It wasn't a very well planned lie, and I realized this quickly when he started asking questions about the elves and how they got here, how they carried the toys back to Santa and a bunch of other questions I wasn't really prepared for (when did he get so smart?).  Eventually he rolled his eyes and agreed to behave and come in the store. 

I held his grubby little hand as we walked into the store where we were handed a big red bag (or what I referred to as a magical Santa sack) when suddenly I felt his grip tighten.  I looked at him and realized that his jaw was on the ground and his eyes were as big as dinner plates.  When I turned to see what he was staring at, I saw our friend "Little Dad".

Yeah, remember him? Turns out "Little Dad" lives in our neighbourhood and my child torments this poor man by pointing out everything he does ("Look, Little Dad is riding his bike hahahaaaaaa"), rather loudly, even though I remind him every time that people are different and I'm sure that he's a nice man (yatta yatta....). 

I felt this was no time for a lesson in manners, I knew what was about to spew out of my child's mouth and it wasn't going to be a good situation. I rushed by quickly dragging my amazed child behind me.  We got about half way down the aisle when it came out "MOM, look there's an elf!!!!!"


Luckily nobody else heard, but how do you handle such a situation?

I do have to say though, he was so well behaved in the store for the rest of the time. He didn't say a peep, he didn't ask for a single toy and there was no whining to go home, so I have to thank "Little Dad" for all his help.