When the Joke Goes Too Far

Yesterday morning we, as a family, went out and ran some errands.  Our first stop was the market for fresh rolls for dinner.  Josh ran in on his own, as all we needed was rolls.  As we were sitting in the car waiting for him to come back Zeke said, "This is taking too long.  Let's leave."  I looked back at him and asked, "What? And leave Daddy here by himself?" Zeke smiled real big and said, "Yeah. He can stay here forever."  So I said how that would make me sad because I would miss Daddy, and then Deacon piped up that he would miss Daddy too.  Then Zeke started cracking up saying that he was "only making a joke."  Silly boy.

Fast forward an hour or so.  After the market Josh dropped me off at the grocery store, and then went on to a home improvement store with the 3 boys.  They finished their shopping before I finished mine, so the boys found themselves once again, sitting in a parking lot, waiting on a parent.

Zeke thought this would be a great time to "make his joke" again. So, once again he said, "This is taking too long, let's leave."  But instead of talking it through with him like I did, Josh just said, "Okay" and started to move the car.  When relating the story to me Josh said, "He went from laughing to straight unhinged in 0 seconds."  Apparently when Josh started moving the car, Zeke immediately started crying because he thought Josh would actually leave me there.  Sweet boy.

A few minutes later I came out of the store (Josh had just moved the car from the back of the parking lot to next to the store).  Now I understand why Zeke was waving rather enthusiastically at me from the car when he saw me.  So I loaded the groceries into the back of the car, and walked away to return the shopping cart, at which point Josh said, "Okay! We've got all the food, let's go!" and started inching the car forward.  This time, both Zeke AND Deacon started crying.  Smooth Josh.

When I got in the car, Josh was cracking up and told me what all had just gone down.  So I looked back at Zeke's tear-stained face, and took his hand, and assured him that Daddy would never do something so dumb as to leave me anywhere.  He felt better then, but still clutched my hand for a good portion of the ride home.