Kids, and so it begins...

Tonight is trash night and the youngest is helping me collect the trash. I reach into the trash can and notice that someone has been leaving their artwork on the cabinets (pictured below). Red Ant is downstairs collecting the trash when the inquisition starts. I've got a fairly good idea who's it is too...

K: Row, come here for a minute.
Row: Okay
K: Did you draw on the cabinet?
Row: No
K: Alright.
(Red Ant comes back upstairs and Row is gone)
K: Ant, did you draw on the cabinet?
Ant: No.
K: Well Row didn't do it...do you think Mommy did it?
Ant: (shakes his head no)
K: I know that I didn't do it, so that leaves you and Row. Do you know who did it?
Ant: Row didn't do it.

Now, I'm not much on four year old logic, but I think that's an admission of guilt.

K: Did you draw on the cabinet?
Ant: (looking down) Yes
K: If you had told me the truth the first time, then I was just going to have you clean it. Since you lied, I'm thinking that I need to give you a spanking and have you clean it.
Ant: (starts to tear up)
K: ( I sit down and tell Ant to come here and I give him a big hug while telling him) I'm not going to give you a spanking this time, but when you lie to me I think that you don't like me. I'll also have a hard time believing you if you lie to me.
Ant: (through the tears) I didn't know that drawing on the walls was against the rules...(sob sob)
K: Well they are against the rules. We only draw on paper.
Ant: (drying up now) Okay.
K: I love you, now take this wet rag and clean up your mess.

He then proceeds to clean up the scribblings. He walks over to the next cabinet, and shows me a yellow marker scribbling that is barely visible. Ant says that "this one didn't want to stay here very good", so he cleans up that one too. For the next few minutes, he goes around the kitchen showing me different marks that he has left on the cabinets while cleaning them up. Yellow highlighter on the stainless steel dishwasher that he informs me didn't "stay very well."

I wouldn't trade my boys for anything - K