Evil Genius

Theo can tell time (more or less) on a digital clock, and he knows he's allowed to get out of bed every morning at 7 a.m. That said, I wanted a few extra minutes to myself to shower before he awakened, so I decided to be clever and set his clock back 20 minutes--so when his clock says 7:00, it's actually 7:20. (Why not just tell him he can't get up until 7:20? Because I fight parenting battles every day, and I didn't feel like fighting yet another....)

This plan worked very well for a couple of months. And then, a few days ago, I noticed he burst into my room at 7:15. "That's odd," I thought. "His clock should say 6:55 right now." I went and checked, and it said 7:04. I reset it and didn't think much about it--perhaps Chris had changed it and forgotten to tell me. It's on top of a five-foot dresser, so surely Theo hadn't messed with it. (Ha!)

This morning, Theo burst into my room at 7:00...by my clock. "Your clock doesn't say 7:00!" I challenged. "Yes, it does," he replied. I went to check. Guess what? His clock said 7:02. I asked Chris whether he had reset it. He hadn't. I haven't. Sam can't even really use his hands yet, much less climb atop a dresser to stage such an evil plan! The pugs don't have opposable thumbs, so it wasn't them. That leaves one person who could've changed the clock: one short, blond mop-top.

What really floors me is that he not only managed to climb to the top of the five-foot dresser, but he somehow pushed the right sequence of buttons to change the clock to exactly 7:00. My mother can't even reset an alarm clock--how did my four-year-old manage to do it? This isn't a matter of just randomly pressing buttons and getting lucky--he actually managed to reset it to the correct time.

Evil genius, I tell you...