Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

I am a terrible, terrible mother. I have started to lie to my children.

They are only 3 and almost 2 respectively but I am telling them porky pies already. I feel awful about it but I continue to do it.

What cause could there be for a mother to lie to two small children under the age of 4, you might wonder. Well, I'll tell you. Shopping trips keep picking up additional 'stops'. Kids develop their fascinations, obsessions and routines. It was fine when it started with Angelica pressing all the buttons at the crossings but now Natasha has to press them too. Then there was Iggle Piggle's boat; a ride for small children based on one of the characters from In The Night Garden which I made the mistake of allowing them to go on once and now they have to go on every time we leave the house. Then there's the lift in the local shopping centre that they have to ride in (and both press the button in). Oh, and then there's the peppers.

This is an Angelica thing. One night my husband nipped to the supermarket just before the girls' bedtime and took Angelica for a walk with him. They returned full of joy about the different coloured peppers they had seen... well, one of them was slightly more enthusiastic than the other... and ever since that day a trip to the supermarket has not been complete without a detour round the opposite side of the vegetable aisle to see the peppers.

"Red peppers..." Angelica's eyes gleam, "...yellow peppers... orange peppers... green peppers..."

"Very good," I tell her before she adds with a cheeky grin;

"...BLUE peppers!"

And this was fine... annoying but fine until it got to the point where she wanted to take home one of each of the aforementioned peppers and the fact that neither my DH or I like peppers dissuaded her from this quest. I would often reach the checkout to find a sneaky pepper residing in the basket, or one sat in the pushchair.

Eventually, last week, I'd had enough. I was exhausted, I had a headache and I couldn't face spending half an hour checking for enemy peppers secreted about the pushchair so I marched on straight past the vegetables and down the frozen chicken aisle.

"Peppers?!" Angelica cried.

"They've... gone on holiday," I told her.

Angelica understands about holidays. She knows when people go on holiday she can't see them for a little while. She didn't even question this statement, she just took it as a fact. When we got home she even told her daddy, "Peppers gone on holiday!"

I felt like such a terrible mother! I had lied to my daughter... about peppers taking a vacation!

But it didn't stop me repeating the trick yesterday when the heat was getting to me and I couldn't face trudging around the store or the town for very long. In fact, the peppers and Iggle Piggle's Boat went on holiday yesterday, and still she believed me.

I have a feeling many, many things will be going on holiday over the next few weeks.