Is he really going to...?

This week saw the start of a momentous project, the removal of the last of the wall paper that this house was completely wrapped up in when we bought it. I mean, people,what were you thinking about?!! We have lived here nearly four years and we have had to take it one room at a time. Things like giving birth to the littler boy and the months of sleepless nights which followed kind of slowed the pace. The upstairs landing, the stairwell and the wee entrance hall were the most liveable with, covered in that thick kind of textured paper and painted white

We can live with it no more so this week armed with a scraper and a wall paper stripper, and a most excited pint pot sized helper, I got the project underway. There is something satisfying about stripping paper, particularly when it comes off in wonderfully large pieces. The littler boy was having a ball too, pulling at pieces which were running up the wall to heights way higher than him. The problem came for me when the wall paper pulled away from the ceiling and large chunks of very sticky gloss paint came loose like wads of chewing gum. Now I know what needs to be done. You need to run the knife along the edge of the paper leaving a tidy edge which makes the painting so much easier. I know this why? Mike has patiently explained this to me on a least two, actually make that three, occasions. Well, I had run the scraper firmly along. That was bound to have the same effect, right? Wrong!!

"Oh no!!," said I to the little helper, "Your Dad is going to kill me!"

"Ahhh," said he surveying the damage obvious even to a four year old. "Just don't tell him."

You what? You are just a little person, you have not even run wild through the school playground and your immediate reaction is to lie, or to at least lie by omission. So I gently had a wee chat about the fact that telling the truth is always the best option, even if it will land you into a bit of trouble.

"But Mummy, will he really kill you?"

Are you kidding me? Mental note to self - drop that expression from your repertoire!

"No sweetheart. Daddy knows that Mummy get things wrong lots of times. He will be able to fix this. He might just be a little cross that is all!"

We live in a world of spin and untruths. We need to consciously teach our kids to be honest and to value that.

This was reinforced this week when the little girl did something which will remain between her and I, and a few folks I trust with the story, and blamed it on her imaginary dog! There clearly needs to be some work done here. Telling the truth seems more important than teaching her to lie well!!