My eldest has turned into a Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire. I won’t go into details because it’s not even worth wasting my precious typing muscles on it, but the other day he repeatedly lied to me (all the while getting severely chastised for it) on the topic of underwear (on whether he was wearing it, if he’d worn them to school, etc.). Come on! Don’t waste perfectly good lies on underwear! Not to mention dropping a lie that can easily be proven wrong with the pulling down of pants! I’ll admit that it’s slightly amusing when the lie has no correlation to reality what-so-ever. Like, “Mom, it’s raining.” “Uh, no, Matthew, it’s not.” “Yeah-huh. It’s raining outside. Actually it’s pouring.” “Matthew, it is NOT…OK, why am I even having this argument right now?”

In addition to the lying, Matthew’s been toying with all sorts of attitude and general behavior-badness. (Yes, I realize that the behavior issues of my children, next to some, are nothing, but still…when you’re living it day-in, day-out it gets a bit draining). Matthew even dropped the W-word on me the other day. I told him to do something and he responded with the slightest of eye rolls and a, “whatever” under his breath. I believe my response was like that of being slapped in the face – a look of shock and disbelief took hold and was accompanied by the slow intake of air and denial. No you di-nt! My son?? My FOUR year-old son? Dropping the W-bomb on me?? Are you kidding? He’s not a teen…he’s not even a pre-teen!

So, you can imagine that this ‘tude from Matthew is met by my parental-version-of-‘tude right back. (As in, there’s been quite a bit of scolding and voice-raising in this household, I’m ashamed to say). The other night – the night of Underwear Lying Incident ’08 – Matthew had requested that I put him to bed. I agreed to this as it’s fairly standard protocol. Well, I was getting Zach ready for bed – diaper changing and slathering in his Eczema-fighting lotionizing regiment – when Matthew walked in and placed his hands on his hips.

“Hello,” I say, looking up at him.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Matthew?”
“You’ve been cancelled.”
Confused pause. (Actually a “pregnant pause,” if you will, but I don’t want to confuse people lest they think I’m with child and pausing for that reason…as I’m not…just to be clear). “I’m sorry, what?”
“You-have-been-cancelled,” Matthew enunciates each word incase I really am slow.
“I’ve been cancelled at…?”
“You have been cancelled; you are not putting me to bed. Daddy is.”
“Um, OK. Did Daddy tell you to tell me that I’ve been ‘cancelled’?”
“Yes.”
“OK, why don’t you go ask Daddy if that means I’m ‘fired’?” (Thinking: is this his new take on the whole Donald Trump-Apprentice-lingo AND hmmm, if I’ve been fired from my motherly duties, does that also mean I get out of doing the dishes tonight too?!)
Matthew grins as he leaves the room – he enjoys delivering messages.
When he returns I say, “So, what did Daddy say?”
“He said, I need to go brush my teeth.”

So game over, Matthew brushes his teeth and gets ready for bed, and Mike does the whole bedtime routine as I’ve been “cancelled.”

Later, I asked Mike “cancelled?! Why cancelled?”
“Huh?” Mike gave me a blank stare.
“Matthew said that you told him to tell me that I was cancelled…from doing bedtime.”
“I never told him that!”
“You never used or taught him the word cancelled?”
“Nope.”

OK, then, so it was all my son’s idea to dismiss me from the bedtime scene. I didn’t know if I should be hurt or happy with the extra time I had on my hands! Either way, Trump could use a new line. The whole “You’re fired” thing is so Apprentice circa ’05-’06; “You’re cancelled,” is really where it’s at.