LIAR!

Alex went through the lying phase. I may have blocked it out but I don't remember it being really long. Maybe I was just too tired from having the girls around that I just don't remember or didn't notice it happening. But he's always been the kid most concerned with fairness and equality. Except when he throws caution to the wind and tries to get a little more than everyone else... but at games and life in general, he's my most honest and equal child.

Annie can't lie for anything. This does NOT mean she doesn't try, it just means she does it SO badly.

"How badly does she do it?" you ask?

You can tell she's going to lie to you from the minute she walks into the room. Before she opens her mouth you know you're about to hear a bunch of malarkey. Occasionally she'll get me to believe her but Aiden can see right through and fairly quickly we can get to the actual truth.

This is somewhat helped along by Ashley who is faithfully following behind Annie making sure she is telling the real story.

Ashley isn't a liar very often. And she doesn't give it away with her face. Her tactic is to use some 4 year old form of reverse psychology. For example, the other day she came wandering out to the living room with a connector from the glow stick necklace she'd had for the 4th of July.

"I didn't put this in my butt" she informed us.***

Riiiight. After some further questioning and a lot of tears we finally got her to realize we know what the real "truff" is and she should just tell it to us.

Later that same day we were coming in from outside and walked past a stroller we have procured. It's been a favorite pastime for the girls to push it around with baby dolls and occasionally Goretti's baby in it. This makes them feel VERY important. And I guess they are in their mommy phases. Especially Annie. But I digress...

"I did not sit in that stroller" Ashley told me.

I did not have the energy to deal with it right then so I played along. "Oh good," I told her, "because that stroller is for babies and little kids not little BIG kids. If you sat in it you might not get to push Salma around in it anymore."

"Oh."

I think she learned her lesson.

***This sparked a whole lot of terror on my part (where would she come up with this idea!??!) and led to a lot of worries, phone calls for advice, and tears that someone had hurt her... in the end (no pun intended) we have decided it's one of the benign things kids do.