Your Loving Mother

While we were working today I came across Sadie's Halloween candy scattered all over the floor.  She wasn't around so I took a bunch of it and threw it in the trash, targeting those teeth-rotting blow pops.  I put the rest back into her still very full bucket and went on my merry way, thinking I had saved my child from a cavity or two and myself from a few hundred dollars at the dentist. 

A few hours later Cassidy, Xander and I were working on some school lessons and I could hear Sadie in the background weeping and wailing and, I think, gnashing her (unrotten) teeth.  I could hear Nicole trying to soothe her but I ignored it, because we were in the middle of a massive catch up on vocabulary lessons and I figured if it was bad enough they would interrupt me. When we finished, Sadie came to the chair that Cassidy, Xander and I were snuggled into with her face all blotchy and red. She started accusing Cassidy of stealing her lollipops.  "I had SEVEN!!"  She says.  (Who knew she was keeping track? I had left one in her bucket for good measure!)

I quickly told her that I would take care of it when we were finished working; dagger to my guilty heart!  In the meantime, she fell asleep from so much grief and I ran to the trash and dug out all six of the disposed lollipops.  I never admitted what I had done, but I sure was the hero when I handed her the bucket with the returned lollipops. 

I can't tell if it was worse to throw them away in the first place, or to give them back with my hero mask.  :/

We then began working on her last lesson for the day - art!  There was a sweet picture of a boy in the lap of a loved one.  This man had his arms around the boy and was teaching him to play the banjo.  The lesson prompted me to ask Sadie if she had ever had a special moment like that with someone she loves.  She looked me in the eye all lovingly and said, "With YOU!!!" 

I am her hero. 

Someday she will read this, and she'll know that I was the evil one who caused her sorrow. 

Dear Sadie,

Please forgive me.

Love,
Mom